Barriers and opportunities towards monitoring and asset management of EU transport infrastructure

Recent technological developments have clear potential to support paradigm shift from corrective maintenance towards risk‐based/predictive maintenance through data‐informed decision‐making. The most promising developments are already taken up by local communities. Acknowledging that successful development, rollout and implementation of standardisation is only possible with thorough understanding of the full context, the H2020 CSA IM‐SAFE project evaluated the main barriers and opportunities that need to be overcome to enable well‐functioning monitoring and maintenance of transport infrastructure. As the European countries have different political, economic and social situations, the analyses have been performed on the national level, and the outcomes have been aggregated to identify main barriers at EU level. This paper presents the outcomes of the analysis of PEST barriers and SWOT analyses and discusses the connection between the barriers and the limitations in the existing EU monitoring standards and opportunities for the national implementation. Finally, the article highlights the importance to consider different scenarios and their potential environmental constraints in order to ensure that the exploitation opportunities are successful and sustainable in the long‐term.