Automatic Logical Inconsistency Detection in the National Bridge Inventory

Studies about the data quality of National Bridge Inventory (NBI) reveal missing, erroneous, and logically conflicting data. Existing data quality programs lack a focus on detecting the logical inconsistencies within NBI and between NBI and external data sources. For example, within NBI, the structural condition ratings of some bridges improve over a period while having no improvement activity or maintenance funds recorded in relevant attributes documented in NBI. An example of logical inconsistencies between NBI and external data sources is that some bridges are not located within 100 meters of any roads extracted from Google Map. Manual detection of such logical errors is tedious and error-prone. This paper proposes a systematical “hypothesis testing” approach for automatically detecting logical inconsistencies within NBI and between NBI and external data sources. Using this framework, the authors detected logical inconsistencies in the NBI data of two sample states for revealing suspicious data items in NBI. The results showed that about 1% of bridges were not located within 100 meters of any actual roads, and few bridges showed improvements in the structural evaluation without any reported maintenance records.