Many European bridges built in the mid‑20th century are now ageing, exposed to growing traffic, environmental pressures and the effects of climate change. At the same time, the bridge sector remains only partially digitalised, relying heavily on manual inspections and fragmented information. This situation limits timely decision‑making and leads to higher costs, reduced reliability and avoidable environmental impacts. Digital technologies—such as sensors, drones, satellite measurements, cloud platforms and artificial intelligence—offer major opportunities to improve accuracy, efficiency and sustainability across the whole lifecycle of bridges, yet their uptake in the sector remains slow.
BRIDGITISE addresses this challenge by establishing the first European Industrial Doctorate devoted to the digital transformation of bridge integrity management. The project brings together academic institutions, technology providers and infrastructure operators to train a new generation of specialists capable of merging engineering knowledge with advanced digital skills. Its core objective is to develop and validate innovative methods to collect, process and model bridge information in a cost‑effective and sustainable way.
The project focuses on three research goals: improving data collection using emerging technologies; creating secure and efficient tools to process and share large volumes of information; and developing digital models to support better maintenance and investment decisions. These solutions will be tested using real‑world bridge data. BRIDGITISE also promotes open science, inclusiveness and responsible innovation, ensuring that digitalisation benefits society widely.
By enabling earlier detection of deterioration, reducing disruptions, extending service life and lowering emissions, the project is expected to strengthen the resilience, safety and sustainability of Europe’s transport infrastructure while helping to close the digital skills gap in the construction sector.
