La Marota Viaduct Digital Twin
Preventive maintenance, powered by Contactless Laser Radar
Rail infrastructure is expected to deliver higher availability with lower uncertainty, even as environmental extremes become more frequent and operating conditions grow more demanding. For bridge owners, that shifts the maintenance question from “What did we see in the last inspection?” to “What is changing right now, and how early can we detect it?”
At the La Marota high-speed viaduct on the Córdoba–Málaga line, Ommatidia deployed non-contact Laser Radar monitoring to provide high-density deflection and vibration measurements that support a digital twin workflow for predictive and preventive maintenance, within an ADIF-CDTI pre-commercial procurement (CPI/CPP) initiative.
The maintenance challenge for critical bridges
Bridges and viaducts are long-life assets but their performance can shift due to:
- gradual degradation and fatigue,
- changes in boundary conditions,
- temperature-driven effects and extreme weather exposure,
- and evolving operational demands.
Traditional inspection cycles can miss early signals. What infrastructure managers increasingly need is objective, repeatable measurement, dense enough to track subtle changes, and practical enough to deploy without heavy fieldwork.
The ADIF-CDTI CPI/CPP initiative explicitly targets this gap: monitoring bridges and viaducts to optimize maintenance and minimize in-service risk, through innovative inspection solutions.
From periodic checks to preventive maintenance
Ommatidia’s role is not simply “measuring vibrations”, it’s enabling a maintenance workflow where measurement becomes a decision tool:
Baseline → Repeatable monitoring → Trend detection → Maintenance prioritization
That shift matters because preventive maintenance is most effective when it is:
- early (before constraints appear),
- targeted (intervene where change is detected),
- and quantified (showing evidence of improvement after action).
ADIF has reinforced this direction publicly through its focus on predictive maintenance and safety-oriented R&D demonstrators under CDTI’s pre-commercial procurement program.
Why this matters now: resilience and trust in the infrastructure era
Two forces are converging:
1) Climate pressure on assets
European climate risk assessments point to infrastructure exposure as a material risk area, reinforcing the need for monitoring strategies that help owners adapt and manage uncertainty.
2) Higher expectations for service continuity and assurance
Across the sector, there is a clear shift toward systems that provide continuous insight, not just periodic snapshots—because modern rail networks run closer to capacity, and stakeholders expect issues to be identified earlier and managed more transparently.
Non-contact Laser Radar monitoring fits this direction: it supports proactive risk management while keeping on-site operations efficient.
What Ommatidia delivered at La Marota
1) Non-contact measurement at scale
Ommatidia installed multiple Q1S Laser RADAR units on the La Marota viaduct to enable simultaneous measurements across many points, capturing:
- structural deflection/displacement response,
- high-sensitivity vibration data suitable for modal characterization,
- repeatable datasets for trend tracking over time.
This approach reduces the operational friction of instrumenting large bridges because the measurement is remote and contactless, a practical advantage when you want dense spatial coverage without installing large numbers of physical sensors.
2) A measurement backbone that can “feed” a digital twin
Laser Radar produces metrologically meaningful signals (deflection + vibration) that can be used to:
- establish a baseline structural signature,
- identify drift versus normal variability,
- calibrate/validate models,
- and support maintenance prioritization with data, not assumptions.
In parallel, the project scope includes development of a digital twin for La Marota, with real-time web visualization among the stated objectives.
3) The footprint for a scalable installation
A key design goal at La Marota was not only measurement performance, but deployability. Ommatidia’s Laser Radar approach is well suited to scaling from a single bridge to a network-level program, because the sensing is contactless (no distributed sensor installation on the structure) and the site footprint can be kept light.
Built for low-friction deployment
- Remote, stand-off measurement means fewer on-structure interventions and simpler logistics compared with instrumenting many points.
- Edge-ready architecture: data can be processed locally for event detection / compression, then streamed for deeper analytics and digital-twin updates.
- Autonomous operation: with a properly engineered enclosure and power budget, the measurement station can be designed to run unattended.
Solar power + 5G: a practical pathway to scale
With solar power (plus battery buffering) and 5G connectivity, a Laser Radar station can be deployed in locations where mains power and wired comms are expensive or slow to provision-supporting:
- rapid roll-out to priority assets,
- repeatable monitoring (scheduled campaigns or triggered checks),
- and centralized oversight across multiple sites.
Network-level vision
This creates the footprint for a scalable monitoring layer across the rail network: deploy where risk and criticality are highest, measure consistently, and feed the same digital-twin workflow, so maintenance planning is driven by comparable, objective data rather than inconsistent inspection snapshots.
Deflection and Vibration Monitoring of La Marota Viaduct, using 128-Channel Ommatidia’s Q1s Laser Radar System.
We employed our Q1s system combining massively parallel FMCW Laser Radar and Laser Doppler Vibrometry to monitor and analyze the deflection and structural vibrations of La Marota Viaduct, as part of a multi-year structural health monitoring project for high-speed railway infrastructure in southern Spain.
The unique capability to measure without contact 128 simultaneous points on the deck surface at 40 kHz sampling rate allows the real-time capture of dynamic structural behavior across a wide range of frequencies from a single installation point.
Tender and program context: ADIF + CDTI CPI/CPP
The La Marota work aligns with the CDTI–ADIF innovation procurement initiative for inspection of bridges/viaducts and railway assets, aimed at optimizing maintenance and minimizing operational risk.
ADIF has also formalized ongoing work related to the La Marota monitoring system through subsequent contracting for improvement, update, and follow-up of the installed monitoring (“auscultación”) system.
Partners
This project was delivered with a consortium combining engineering, research, and complementary sensing expertise: INES Ingeniería, TWave, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), and Ingeniería de Control del Ruido (ICR).
Why Laser Radar for bridge digital twins
Build a digital twin that reflects the real structure, not assumptions
If you’re evaluating digital twins for bridges, viaducts, or critical civil assets, talk to Ommatidia about:
- baseline characterization campaigns,
- repeatable Laser Radar monitoring,
- vibration + deflection measurement strategies,
- and how to turn signals into preventive maintenance actions.
