Where there are mountains, we carve roads; where there are rivers, we build bridges. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, China’s basic industries and infrastructure have undergone large-scale investment and construction for a long period, laying a solid foundation for the development of the national economy and the improvement of people’s living standards. However, as time goes by, some roads, bridges, railways, dams, and iron towers that have been put into use have gradually entered the stage of transformation, upgrading, and maintenance. To enhance the sustainable service capacity of infrastructure, local governments have successively put forward maintenance requirements focusing on intelligence, green development, and digitalization. The 14th Five-Year Plan for Green Transportation Development in Jiangsu Province specifically proposes to widely apply modern information technologies in the infrastructure field, including intelligent monitoring and intelligent detection. The universal market demand has driven the rapid development of structural health monitoring technology, and the concept of "lightweight monitoring" has also been widely mentioned.

"The essence of lightweight monitoring is targeted indicator monitoring oriented to scenario needs, enabling targeted sensing and active early warning for scenario requirements. In essence, it also applies the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to the field of infrastructure safety monitoring. Through the whole-lifecycle monitoring, it promptly detects structural damage to infrastructure, evaluates its safety, and triggers early warning in severe cases—thereby improving the service efficiency of infrastructure and preventing risks," said Ding Huaping, founder of Jiangsu Bowei Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Bowei Intelligence"). Having studied in this field for many years, Ding has been actively promoting the application and popularization of lightweight monitoring in the infrastructure sector.

Ding Huaping holds a doctoral degree from the School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University. He is also a Nanjing High-Level Recommended Talent, an expert for evaluating Jiangsu provincial science and technology projects, and an off-campus supervisor for master’s students at Nanjing University and Southeast University. As an expert talent, Ding has conducted research in the interdisciplinary fields of electronic science & technology and structural engineering for more than a decade, focusing on the application of IoT products in the field of structural safety. He has published more than 10 papers in core domestic and international journals such as SCI/EI, obtained 6 authorized national invention patents, and led or participated in more than 10 major projects on intelligent detection of highways, bridges, and tunnels. Despite having rich knowledge reserves and first-hand experience in transforming scientific and technological innovation achievements, the marketization of his research results has long been a challenge for Ding.

In March 2021, Ding invited two friends who had worked in the road and bridge field for more than 10 years to join him in co-founding Bowei Intelligence. He also formed a core technical team mainly composed of young doctors from Nanjing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), focusing on the R&D and industrialization of "lightweight sensing and structural health monitoring" technology. The team is committed to translating scientific research achievements into practical applications and aligning them with real market needs. After one year of development, Bowei Intelligence has created a set of mature, commercializable intelligent monitoring products that integrate hardware and software.

To accelerate technological innovation and secure more financial support, in early 2022, Ding Huaping participated in the selection of "Nanjing Excellent Youth College Student Entrepreneurship Projects" and won a 200,000-yuan investment subsidy from the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security and Nanjing Innovation Investment Group. With the support of this fund, Bowei Intelligence further iterated its technologies and products, and co-established a joint laboratory for artificial intelligence acceleration and deep learning algorithm research with Nanjing University to continuously optimize algorithms for lightweight sensing. In November 2022, Bowei Intelligence was successfully selected into the "Zijin Mountain Talent · Xingang Plan" high-level innovation and entrepreneurship talent project.

"Jiangsu is one of the earliest regions in China to apply lightweight monitoring technology to bridge monitoring and achieve remarkable results," Ding Huaping introduced. "This year, China Communications News reported on an incident where maintenance personnel from the Highway Development Center of the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Transportation detected water accumulation and corrosion in the anchor heads of a tied arch bridge section through the early warning information sent by the bridge lightweight health monitoring system. After further monitoring the corrosion rate, they assessed and eliminated the safety hazard. ‘Lightweight monitoring technologies and equipment’ are gradually being promoted and recognized."

Based on interdisciplinary research achievements and combined with case experience and data models obtained from experiments on the Tsing Ma Bridge, Taizhou Bridge, Canton Tower, and Nanjing Yangtze River Tunnel, Bowei Intelligence’s team has developed hardware and software products—such as wireless lightweight tilt sensors, vibration sensors, cable force sensors, and digital data loggers—relying on its core technical advantages in "lightweight and rapidly deployable multi-core sensing terminals", "dynamic big data adaptive real-time processing", and "structural health diagnosis and identification technology based on probability statistics". It has also built a software platform with functions including data collection and management, structural dynamic analysis, and health monitoring and evaluation. Meanwhile, Bowei Intelligence provides corresponding safety monitoring and early warning solutions based on different structural parameters, structural forms, and physical/anthropogenic influencing factors of bridges, tunnels, slopes, and buildings. These solutions have been deployed and applied in multiple provinces including Jiangsu, Guangdong, Ningxia, and Guangxi.

"During my research work at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, our team collected real-time dynamic data on the seismic and typhoon responses of the Canton Tower at different heights. By analyzing the data and comparing the data before, during, and after earthquakes and typhoons, we could determine whether the building had suffered structural damage or internal injuries when affected by external forces, and provide guidance for building maintenance. All this work can be predicted through pre-established models, rather than being done only after an early warning is issued or substantial risks occur," Ding Huaping shared. With years of accumulated experience in the field of structural health and an understanding of the value of data, the research team also participated in providing structural safety monitoring solutions for the Taizhou Yangtze River Highway Bridge—the world’s first kilometer-level multi-tower and multi-span suspension bridge—gaining rich experience in project research and industrialization.

"A client commented on our products and services: ‘Bowei Intelligence’s lightweight sensing equipment features low cost, low power consumption, and high sensitivity. Its non-destructive data collection technology, diagnostic algorithms, multi-level analysis, and threshold-based early warning can detect early structural damage and hidden risks, truly helping us control the risk occurrence rate through technology.’ I think this is where our advantages lie," Ding said. Client recognition has provided the Bowei Intelligence team with the motivation to forge ahead.

In December 2022, relying on its technological innovation advantages and positive market application results, Bowei Intelligence received follow-up micro-investment from Nanjing Innovation Investment Group. This investment not only reflects the investment team’s expectations for Bowei Intelligence’s development prospects but also their anticipation for more application scenarios of lightweight monitoring in the transportation infrastructure field. Currently, Bowei Intelligence holds more than 10 patents and software copyrights, and has successively obtained titles such as "National Technology-Based SME", "Jiangsu Private Technology Enterprise", and "Jiangsu Innovative SME". In December 2023, it was successfully recognized as a "National High-Tech Enterprise".

As a Nanjing municipal government investment fund, Nanjing Innovation Investment Group has always given full play to the guiding and driving role of government funds, acting as a "talent spotter", "companion", and "enabler" to support the growth of sci-tech innovation enterprises. "As a large amount of China’s infrastructure maintenance enters a stage of scientific, refined, and green development, how to better leverage the role of structural health monitoring systems—collecting data, conducting analysis, and providing more accurate basis for structural maintenance decisions—has become a new issue facing relevant institutions. Bowei Intelligence has transformed its years of research results into a lightweight structural monitoring system integrating hardware and software, and its diagnostic and identification technology has industry advantages. This is of great value for the long-term maintenance of infrastructure and risk prevention," a representative of the group commented.

After years of R&D, model testing, and analysis, Bowei Intelligence’s terminal products have gained advantages in the "lightweight monitoring" field. However, in Ding Huaping’s view, monitoring and early warning should be more "autonomous and intelligent". He believes that future infrastructure structural health monitoring, early warning, and management need to address how to use lightweight solutions combined with data mining to determine key indicators such as "whether there is damage, the location of damage, and the degree of damage" to guide management and maintenance units in the operation and management of infrastructure. Therefore, the Bowei Intelligence team has begun to promote the R&D of more cost-effective products, enhance the model’s ability of self-adjustment and independent learning, and focus on lightweight to iterate monitoring and early warning equipment toward miniaturization, intelligence, and precision—ultimately improving monitoring efficiency, accuracy, and data value.

Thus, Ding Huaping summarized Bowei Intelligence’s future development plan as the "1+3+6+9" plan:

By building an integrated technology and industrial ecosystem centered on "perceptual intelligence + data intelligence + application intelligence", combining continuous data analysis, ongoing model iteration, and AI deep learning, Bowei Intelligence aims to consolidate its capabilities. It plans to quickly promote its lightweight intelligent monitoring solutions across the country within 3-5 years and become a leader in the field of lightweight infrastructure structural safety monitoring.