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The Wind and Structural Health Monitoring System (WASHMS) is a sophisticated bridge monitoring system, costing US$1.3 million, used by the Hong Kong Highways Department to ensure road user comfort and safety of the Tsing Ma, Ting Kau, and Kap Shui Mun bridges that run between Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Airport.

In order to oversee the integrity, durability and reliability of the bridges, WASHMS has four different levels of operation: sensory systems, data acquisition systems, local centralised computer systems and global central computer system.

The sensory system consists of approximately 900 sensors and their relevant interfacing units. With more than 350 sensors on the Tsing Ma bridge, 350 on Ting Kau and 200 on Kap Shui Mun, the structural behaviour of the bridges is measured 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The sensors include accelerometers, strain gauges, displacement transducers, level sensing stations, anemometers, temperature sensors and dynamic weight-in-motion sensors. They measure everything from tarmac temperature and strains in structural members to wind speed and the deflection and rotation of the kilometres of cables and any movement of the bridge decks and towers.

These sensors are the early warning system for the bridges, providing the essential information that help the Highways Department to accurately monitor the general health conditions of the bridges.

The structures have been built to withstand up to a one-minute mean wind speed of 95 metres per second. In 1997, when Hong Kong had a direct hit from Typhoon Victor, wind speeds of 110 to 120 kilometres per hour were recorded. However, the highest wind speed on record occurred during Typhoon Wanda in 1962 when a 3 second gust wind speed was recorded at 78.8 metres per second, 284 kilometres per hour.

The information from these hundreds of different sensors is transmitted to the data acquisition outstation units. There are three data acquisition outstation units on Tsing Ma bridge, three on Ting Kau and two on the Kap Shui Mun.

The computing powerhouse for these systems is in the administrative building used by the Highways Department in Tsing Yi. The local central computer system provides data collection control, post-processing, transmission and storage. The global system is used for data acquisition and analysis, assessing the physical conditions and structural functions of the bridges and for integration and manipulation of the data acquisition, analysis and assessing processes.

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