Structural Monitoring of a Prestressed Concrete Bridge Through Combined On-Site Sensors and Satellite Observations
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Monitoring systems capable of capturing both their global behaviour and localised anomalies supports the management of bridges. This paper describes the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) framework implemented on a major Po River crossing along the A21 Piacenza–Brescia motorway in northern Italy. The structure, completed in 1968, extends for 1650 m over 41 spans; the monitoring activity concentrates on the 676.50 m river crossing, consisting of eleven spans of a Gerber girder system. A comprehensive SHM layout has been deployed, integrating static sensors for long-term tracking of displacements and inclinations with dynamic instrumentation for the continuous estimation of modal parameters. These in-situ measurements are complemented by Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) observations from the European Ground Motion Service (EGMS), which enable remote monitoring of structural displacements. The combination of ground-based instruments and satellite data provides a multi-scale view of the bridge response and enhances the capability to detect atypical patterns that may indicate early signs of deterioration. This work focuses on the static component of the monitoring system. EGMS-derived displacement trends are compared with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements to assess their consistency, and a data-driven anomaly detection approach is used to identify areas exhibiting unusual behaviour. The study outlines the monitoring configuration, details the adopted processing methodology, and discusses the main findings, highlighting both the advantages and the limitations of integrating conventional SHM systems with satellite observations and machine-learning techniques.