Engineers create ‘smart’ system to prevent future infrastructure disasters

When the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, collapsed on March 26, 2024, engineers and city managers around the U.S. and world scrambled to assess the safety of infrastructure in their communities. Michigan State University researchers have developed a “deploy-and-forget” system that combines sensors with artificial intelligence, or AI, to assess the health of infrastructure like bridges, roads and dams, before and after events that could damage them.