Bridges

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) in the mainstream has initiated widespread adoption in many aspects of our personal and professional lives. While AI has revolutionised various fields, its application in bridge engineering is still limited. However, when seen not as a replacement for the analytical skills and judgement of engineers, but rather as a tool to enhance their productivity and expand their capabilities, it represents a transformative opportunity.

This paper presents one such application in the design of the Wēiti River bridge, New Zealand’s first extradosed bridge. The design of the Wēiti River bridge was a complex undertaking that demanded the use of cutting-edge tools to optimise analysis and data management. With the assistance of AI, an engineer with minimal prior coding experience was able to efficiently develop Python code to automate section analysis tasks. The development of these bespoke software solutions enabled the efficient processing of large sets of data that would prove cumbersome using existing ubiquitous tools such as Excel.

The successful use of this approach demonstrates how AI can bridge the gap between engineering expertise and programming proficiency, opening access to advanced computational tools that previously would have required extensive programming knowledge. The case study of Wēiti River bridge illustrates an ideal application of AI's abilities by making specialised tasks more manageable and broadening the scope of what engineers can achieve in their practice.