An effective approach to enhancing the sustainability of the built environment – while also protecting owners’ investments – is to extend the service lives of existing structures and infrastructure, since this minimizes embodied carbon and the other environmental impacts of new construction. The benefits are increased if the extent of repair and strengthening work during an asset’s service life is also minimized, since such work also requires materials and energy, and causes disruption to use. This paper discusses how the ability to achieve these goals may be enhanced using modern non-destructive testing technology with an asset-management approach, involving the use of a “digital twin” for effective storage and sharing of information. The improved acquisition of new insights and enhanced availability of older data can enable engineers to optimize maintenance and strengthening work, giving them the confidence needed to extend an asset’s service life.
Moor et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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