Clarkson University to test, monitor Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge

OGDENSBURG, N.Y. — Clarkson University will test and monitor the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge in a partnership with the authority that operates the bridge.

Clarkson has partnered with the Ogdensburg Bridge and Port Authority (OBPA) to handle the testing and monitoring over a three-year period.

The school announced the partnership in a news release posted to its website last week.

“The authority’s partnership with Clarkson University will provide essential information to maintain, monitor, and control the international bridge,” Wade Davis, OBPA executive director, said in the Clarkson news release. “This information will be beneficial as it helps the authority preserve a structure which is critical to the North Country’s economy.”

Clarkson’s bridge engineering and structural-health monitoring group will gather data for the OBPA, the school said.

The faculty engineers and student researchers will use building-information modeling and geographic-information systems (BIM/GIS) techniques, sensing technologies, and monitoring capabilities to gather the data, it added.

“The Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge is a vital link in the infrastructure that links the North Country with Canada, the United States’ largest trading partner,” Kerop Janoyan, professor of civil & environmental engineering, said in the school’s news release. “Clarkson University is pleased to play a role in this and other projects that support economic development in the North Country and New York state.”

Besides his role as a professor, Janoyan also serves as director of Clarkson’s laboratory for intelligent infrastructure and transportation technologies, the school said.

The school’s work during the first year will center on the development of a BIM model of the bridge that is “validated” for structural-analysis efforts.

Clarkson will use and revise the model throughout the project. It will serve as the basis of future OBPA research and facility management on the bridge, the school said.

The model will also provide the OBPA with three-dimensional visualization of the bridge structure’s various elements to “better understand and capture” the overall facility needs, Clarkson added.