EXPERIMENTAL MONITORING OF THE HUMBER BRIDGE USING GPS

The global positioning system (GPS) of navigation satellites can now b e used for real-time monitoring of large-scale structures, such as res ervoirs, tall buildings and bridges. This paper describes the way in w hich the UK's Humber bridge was monitored using 'kinematic GPS'. The r esults show remarkable accuracies of the order of a few millimetres in all three directions. They demonstrate that the technique allows the collection of realtime deflection data which could be used to determin e the deformation characteristics of the bridge and eventually provide a structural failure alarm capability.