A National Bridge Database?
Introduction
The UK does not currently have a national database of bridges. Instead each individual bridge owner maintains their own information about the bridges in their inventory.
Furthermore, different owners may have different ideas of whether or not particular structures should be classified as a bridge. This situation makes it very difficult to produce any sort of meaningful statistics for the UK as a whole.
A collaborative approach
Is it possible to use the Internet to build a national bridge database in a collaborative fashion, analogous to the way in which the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been built? Would such a project be desirable? What form should such a collaborative database take and what information should be stored? How would the validity and integrity of the data be assured? Perhaps the only way to answer these questions is to try it and see.
If you have any information or data about bridges in the UK we would like to hear from you. At this stage the goal is to get a broad overview of the bridge stock in the UK. If there is sufficient interest, this could be expanded upon later. Information may be submitted either by using the form below, or alternatively by email to: bridgemaster@bridgeforum·org.
