Bridge owners, especially municipalities, are becoming plagued with increasing maintenance costs and
decreasing maintenance budgets. With limited funds, each maintenance dollar must be efficiently allocated to the most
critical bridge structure. Objectively determining the most critical bridge structure often requires non-destructive evaluation
and testing, which can be costly in terms of equipment, traffic delay and money. The installation of traditional
contact-based sensors can require equipment for access to key elements and wiring for power supply and data acquisition.
Digital image correlation (DIC) can be used as an alternative to traditional bridge response instruments such as
strain gauges. DIC is a non-contact optical measurement technique that can capture deformation in two and three dimensions
through digital photography. The ability to capture a bridge’s behavior with DIC and calibrate a structural
model with the collected data provides bridge designers and managers with an objective measure of bridge performance
that can be used for asset allocation.