Towards integrated data model for next-generation bridge maintenance

This work streamlines the thus-far separate and difficult management of bridges' 3D geometry data and maintenance information in siloed systems

Hosei University

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A new data model developed by researchers from Hosei University and collaborating institutions integrates IFC and CityGML standards to unify 3D geometry with inspection and repair information. This “one-source, multi-use” framework enables data-driven maintenance, predictive management, and the creation of digital twins for aging bridge infrastructure.

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Credit: Professor Ryuichi Imai from Hosei University, Japan

Japan is facing the urgent challenge of aging infrastructure, amidst ineffective linking of on-site experience and expertise with vast amounts of digital data in maintenance operations. This is especially the case for bridges across Japan. With a large number of bridges constructed during the rapid economic growth period, aging simultaneously, extensive inspection data and repair histories have been managed disparately across paper ledgers or departmental systems thus far, leading to inadequate integration between the experience of skilled engineers and digital data.

To address this inefficiency, it is vital to leverage cutting-edge digital technology and establish a safer, more sustainable infrastructure management system, specifically as a part of the Strategic Innovation Promotion (SIP) Program Smart Infrastructure Management System.

Taking up this challenge, a team of researchers from Japan, led by Professor Ryuichi Imai from the Faculty of Engineering and Design, Hosei University, Japan, and including Dr. Kenji Nakamura, Faculty of Information Technology and Social Sciences, Osaka University of Economics; Dr. Yoshinori Tsukada, Faculty of Engineering, Reitaku University; Dr. Toshio Teraguchi, Faculty of Economics, University of Marketing and Distribution Sciences; and Dr. Chikako Kurokawa, Advanced Technologies Research Laboratory, Asia Air Survey Co. Ltd., has recently addressed the separate and difficult management of bridges' 3D geometry data and their maintenance information such as inspection results and repair history in siloed systems. Their novel findings were made available online on October 5, 2025, published in Volume 40, Issue 27 of the journal Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering on November 14, 2025. 

This study introduces a novel integrated data model that merges two international standards—IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) for construction and Building Information Modeling (BIM), and CityGML for geospatial information. The resulting framework enables the unified, one-source management of both 3D geometric data and maintenance information (such as inspection results and repair history). This integration is expected to significantly streamline and enhance maintenance workflows, including inspection, diagnosis, and repair planning for aging bridges.                                         

“Our work would allow infrastructure managers, specifically local governments, to accurately grasp damage locations found during inspections and past repair histories for the numerous bridges under their jurisdiction, all visualized on 3D models. For example, they can instantly check information—either on-site or in the office—like, ‘Is this damage located in the same spot that was repaired 5 years ago?’ This enables them to make precise, data-driven decisions about repair priorities and the most suitable repair methods. This is expected to lead to improved infrastructure safety and longevity and efficient use of public funds,” remarks Prof. Imai. 

In 5 to 10 years, the team expects the integrated data model from their research to be widely adopted as a standard by local governments nationwide, leading to the creation of digital twins for social infrastructure, starting with bridges. On these digital twins, AI-driven deterioration forecasting simulations would become possible. This would accelerate the shift from reactive maintenance, or fixing things after they break, to predictive maintenance, or repairing at the optimal time before they fail. This will help prevent critical accidents like bridge collapses and extend infrastructure lifespan, contributing to a society where people can live more safely and sustainably. 

Furthermore, during disasters, it will enable the immediate assessment of which bridges are passable, supporting rapid evacuation and recovery efforts.

“In effect, our technology—aimed at connecting field expertise with digital data and realizing future maintenance where infrastructure is collaboratively monitored across communities—can pave the way to a society where future generations can live more securely,” concludes Prof. Imai. 

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Reference

Authors: Kenji Nakamura1, Yoshinori Tsukada2, Toshio Teraguchi3, Chikako Kurokawa4, and Ryuichi Imai5

Title of original paper: integrated data model for bridges with 3D geometry and maintenance information

Journal: Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering

DOI: 10.1111/mice.70084

Affiliations: 
1Faculty of Information Technology and Social Sciences, Osaka University of Economics, Japan
2Faculty of Engineering, Reitaku University, Japan
3Faculty of Economics, University of Marketing and Distribution Sciences, Japan
 4Advanced Technologies Research Laboratory, Asia Air Survey Co. Ltd., Japan
 5Faculty of Engineering and Design, Hosei University, Japan

About Professor Ryuichi Imai  
Ryuichi Imai is a Professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Design, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hosei University, Japan. He obtained a Ph.D. in Engineering from The University of Tokyo. His research interests include intelligent informatics, social infrastructure, civil engineering, architecture, disaster prevention, safety engineering, social systems engineering, construction management, and planning and transportation. He has authored about 70 research articles on these topics and received about 700 citations. 

About Hosei University, Japan
Hosei University is one of the leading private universities in Tokyo, Japan. It offers international courses in many disciplines and has a long and rich history. Founded as a school of Law in 1880, Hosei University evolved into a private university by 1920. The university is also home to multiple research centers that conduct advanced research in various fields, including nanotechnology, sustainability, ecology, and more. The university has three main campuses—Ichigaya, Tama, and Koganei—located across Tokyo.
For more information, please see: https://www.hosei.ac.jp/

Researchers propose an integrated data model to streamline and advance maintenance workflows, including inspection, diagnosis, and repair planning, for aging infrastructure, specifically bridges.

Credit

Professor Ryuichi Imai from Hosei University, Japan

Journal

Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering

DOI

10.1111/mice.70084 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Integrated data model for bridges with 3D geometry and maintenance information

Article Publication Date

24-Nov-2025

 

New study warns of alarming decline in high blood pressure control in England

Queen Mary University of London

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A comprehensive new analysis by researchers at Queen Mary University of London warns that England has lost the substantial gains made in high blood pressure prevention, diagnosis and management during the 2000s. 

Drawing on data from more than 67,000 adults who participated in the annual Health Survey for England between 2003 and 2021, researchers report that the rates of high blood pressure, undiagnosed hypertension and inadequate treatment control have plateaued since 2011 and deteriorated sharply in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Findings of the study published in BMJ Medicine show that while high blood pressure prevalence fell steadily from 37.8 per cent in 2003 to 33.2 per cent in 2018, this improvement stalled thereafter, with little evidence of continued progress up to 2021. Rates of undiagnosed hypertension declined markedly from 32.6 per cent in 2003 to 23.7 per cent in 2011. Subsequently rose back to 32.4 per cent by 2021, effectively returning to levels last observed two decades ago. 

The study also revealed that the proportion of people with undiagnosed high blood pressure who successfully achieved blood pressure control increased strongly until 2011 but showed no meaningful improvement over the following decade, dropping from 63.1 per cent in 2011 to 56.8 per cent in 2021. This indicates that an estimated five million adults in England may now be living with undiagnosed high blood pressure, and roughly another five million have diagnosed but uncontrolled high blood pressure. 

Dr Ajay Gupta, senior author and Consultant in Cardiovascular Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology at Queen Mary said, “Despite early gains, only 38.3% of people with hypertension now have adequately controlled blood pressure—far below the envisioned 80% target if trends in the improvement continued in 2010’s. This shortfall may be a key driver of recently seen rise in the cardiovascular deaths. Urgent action is needed from policymakers and healthcare providers.” 

High blood pressure remains the leading cause of cardiovascular deaths in England. The authors note that premature cardiovascular mortality in England has risen in recent years and closely tracks the increasing burden of poorly controlled and undiagnosed high blood pressure. The stagnation in blood pressure control, combined with growing levels of obesity, higher average salt intake, widening socioeconomic inequalities and increasing prevalence if mental health disorders, suggests that broader changes in health policy, lifestyle and social conditions have contributed to the erosion of earlier progress. 

The study also evaluated the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. It identified a pronounced deterioration of high blood pressure detection and management between 2019 and 2021, characterised by declining blood pressure control and reduced medication use.  They attribute these changes partly to pandemic-related disruptions, including reduced access to routine primary care and curtailed opportunities for blood pressure measurement. 

The authors emphasise that reversing these declines will require coordinated action, including a strengthened national salt-reduction programme, improved access to diagnostic services, robust strategies to remove barriers to medication adherence and a renewed emphasis on clinical education designed to reduce therapeutic inertia. 

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Journal

BMJ Medicine

DOI

10.1136/bmjmed-2025-001556 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Trends in hypertension prevalence, control, and antihypertensive use in England from 2003 to 2021: insights from annual, nationwide Health Surveys for England

Article Publication Date

27-Nov-2025

Metronome-trained monkeys can tap to the beat of human music

Summary author: Walter Beckwith

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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Macaques can tap along to a musical beat, according to a new study – findings that upend the assumption that only animals with vocal-learning abilities can find and move to a groove. According to the authors, the discovery offers fresh insights that suggest the roots of rhythm may run far deeper in our evolutionary past than previously believed. Humans have a unique ability to perceive and move in time to a steady musical beat. It is a skill that develops early in life and requires complex pattern recognition, prediction, and motor coordination. Outside of humans, the ability to synchronize movement to rhythm – isochronicity – is strikingly rare in the animal kingdom and has only been observed in some birds and exceptional individuals of other species, leaving a gap in our understanding of its evolutionary and neurobiological roots. One powerful leading theory, the vocal-learning hypothesis, suggests that rhythmic synchronization depends on specialized brain circuits that tightly link hearing and movement, which evolved to support complex vocal learning. However, previous research shows that macaques, despite not being vocal learners, can be trained to synchronize their taps predictively with metronome beats, hinting at the neural dynamics required for isochronicity.

 

In this study, Vani Rajendran and colleagues investigated whether macaques trained to synchronize their taps with metronome beats could extend their metronome-tapping skills to real music in all its acoustic complexity. Rajendran et al. observed that two metronome-trained macaques independently initiated experimental trials in which they heard one of three human-selected songs and were rewarded when they tapped in time to each song’s tempo. Remarkably, both animals developed consistent tapping rhythms across all songs, and when the authors shifted the music’s tempo, the macaques’ tapping phases shifted as well, demonstrating that they were synchronizing to musical structure rather than responding reflexively to experimental cues. This behavior was observed even when the monkeys were presented with a song they had not yet heard before and when they were no longer rewarded for tapping to the beat. According to the authors, the findings suggest that, although monkeys do not experience music as fully as humans do and require substantial training, beat perception may span a broader evolutionary continuum than previously believed; it is not just restricted to vocal-learning species. “Rajendran et al. are careful to note that the abilities they observed are not natural behaviors: They were conditioned through extrinsic rewards, not the seemingly intrinsic ones that humans experience when they follow rhythmic beats,” write Asif Ghazanfar and Gavin Steingo in a related Perspective that highlights the study’s caveats. “A behavior that has been conditioned may not be equivalent to a behavior that emerges spontaneously.”

 

Podcast: A segment of Science's weekly podcast with Vani Rajendran, related to this research, will be available on the Science.org podcast landing page after the embargo lifts. Reporters are free to make use of the segments for broadcast purposes and/or quote from them – with appropriate attribution (i.e., cite "Science podcast"). Please note that the file itself should not be posted to any other Web site.

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adp5220 

Article Title

Monkeys have rhythm

Article Publication Date

27-Nov-2025

 

Michigan cherry farmers find a surprising food safety ally: falcons

By keeping hungry birds — and their droppings — off farmers’ fruit, kestrels could help in more ways than one.

Michigan State University

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A female kestrel in a cherry orchard in northern Michigan.

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Credit: Photo by M. Shave

The cherry harvest wrapped up months ago. But in northern Michigan, some growers are already anticipating the spring resurgence of a tiny raptor that could benefit next season’s crop.

The American kestrel is the smallest falcon in the U.S. As birds of prey, kestrels deter smaller birds that like to snack on farmers’ fruit. But new research suggests that these winged security guards may have an additional benefit: food safety.

That’s according to a study from Michigan State University, to be published Nov. 27 in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

“They're cool to watch in flight,” said lead author Olivia Smith. They hover in mid-air as they scan the ground below for insects, mice and small birds.

By shooing cherry-pecking birds away, kestrels also keep them from contaminating crops with their droppings, the new findings show.

The research could help farmers grow safer, healthier food that reaps more profits, the researchers said.

“It's hard to keep birds out of crops,” said Smith, an assistant professor of horticulture and member of MSU’s Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program.

Growers have tried methods like nets, noise makers, scarecrows and sprays, but these approaches can be costly and don’t always work.

Even with control measures in place, sweet cherry growers in states such as Michigan, Washington, California and Oregon still lose anywhere from 5% to 30% of their crop to birds each year.

Hungry birds pose another problem: they poop. Some people worry that the mess they leave behind could be laced with pathogens that make people sick.

So the researchers decided to see if enticing predators to patrol orchards could help reduce the risks.

They focused on nest boxes installed in eight sweet cherry orchards in northern Michigan and found that kestrels — which rely on tree cavities and other existing crannies to raise their chicks — were quick to move in.

Then they took note of all the birds they could see or hear as harvest time drew near.

The team found that birds such as robins, grackles and starlings were much less likely to visit orchards and gobble up fruit when kestrels were nesting nearby. By scaring away hungry visitors, kestrels reduced the likelihood of cherry damage more than tenfold.

But their presence had another benefit. The researchers also found fewer signs that birds were doing their business on the cherry trees. Kestrels were associated with a 3-fold reduction in droppings spotted on branches.

“Certainly, kestrels poop too,” said senior author Catherine Lindell, associate professor emerita of Integrative Biology and a member of MSU’s Center for Global Change and Earth Observations.

But the number of fruit-eating birds they keep out of an orchard more than makes up for it, she added. Indeed, they found that cherry trees closer to the kestrel’s nest boxes were less likely to be dusted with droppings.

DNA analysis revealed that 10% of the droppings contained Campylobacter, a bacteria that commonly causes foodborne illness. Symptoms include diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps.

This doesn’t mean that your next bowl of cherries will give you a bellyache, the researchers said. None of the food-borne illness outbreaks caused by Campylobacter have been linked to cherries.

Likewise, Smith added, it may also be too early to blame birds for contaminated crops. Only one outbreak has been traced to birds, a 2008 Campylobacter outbreak caused by migratory cranes in pea fields in Alaska.

But the research suggests kestrels could be a way to improve food safety in other crops that have been associated with outbreaks, such as leafy greens.

“They're really good at keeping the amount of poop down,” Smith said. “That means fewer opportunities for transmission.”

“This won’t solve all the bird problems farmers face,” she added. One issue with depending on kestrels, for example, is that they are more likely to set up shop in some regions than others.

“But it’s a low-cost, low maintenance tool for growers to use in their bird management toolbox,” Lindell said.

Smith was supported by an EEB Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship co-advised by Lindell and EEB faculty member Jen Owen. This work was also funded by a grant to Smith from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (2021-67012-35133).

CITATION: "Falcons Reduce Pre-Harvest Food Safety Risks and Crop Damage From Wild Birds," Olivia M. Smith, Pedro A. P. Rodrigues, Sarah A. Groendyk, Olivia J. Utley, Ashley de Borchgrave d’Altena, Samantha Carbonell, Kayla L. Davis, Talia Swartout, Sofia Varriano, Niesa Kettler, Rinosh Mani, Shannon D. Manning, Jennifer C. Owen, William E. Snyder, and Catherine A. Lindell. Journal of Applied Ecology, Nov. 27, 2025. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.70209

  

A hungry bird eats a farmer's fruit in a cherry orchard in northern Michigan. 

Credit

Olivia Smith, Michigan State University

Journal

Journal of Applied Ecology

DOI

10.1111/1365-2664.70209 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Falcons Reduce Pre-Harvest Food Safety Risks and Crop Damage From Wild Birds

Article Publication Date

27-Nov-2025