Micheal J. Watters, P.E.
Bridge Engineering System Manager
Bridge Program
Wyoming Department of Transportation
DGN: PLEASE PROVIDE SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF YOUR CAREER.
WATTERS: I graduated from Michigan State University in 1975, and worked on the Alaskan pipeline from 1975-76 as a geotechnical engineer designing the supports for the pipeline. I was in the U.S. Air Force from 1976-1980 as an Administrative Officer and Geodetic Survey Officer (performing gravity analysis for the Peacekeeper Missile System and setting calibration control for the GPS satellites). Then I worked for the Wyoming Department of Transportation (DOT) for a year and went back to the University of Wyoming until 1983 where I got my second bachelor's degree in civil engineering. From 1986-2002 while I was working for DOT, I was also in the Wyoming Air National Guard as a Civil Engineering Officer and then an Bioenvironmental Engineer. I retired from the Guard as a lieutenant colonel. Since 1989, I've been working with the Bridge Rating and Analysis of Structural Systems (BRASS) family of bridge analysis and design software, which are written in Fortran, Visual Basic, C++ and a number of other languages.
DGN: WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST INTERESTING TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGY?
WATTERS: I think the most interesting is visualization. Programmers are beginning to marry laser and LIDAR scanning with CADD and animation to obtain real-time 3D point clouds and rendered images. What the lasers do is rotate on an axis and send a laser beam to whatever structure or whatever they want a 3D image of. By sending out this laser beam and retrieving the data, it creates a 3D image of whatever it's scanning. Then you can take that image, render it and incorporate it into a visualization project. Modern visualization is similar to animation that you see in films like
Jurassic Park. It's where you take a 3D view of a photograph or 3D area and render it or superimpose the new roadway or structure over that image and fly down the road and view the new structure from any direction. By using the laser, you can have a 3D view of what it currently looks like and superimpose the new 3D image of what it's going to look like. It helps a lot with public hearings and sessions to help visualize what the project is going to look like.
DGN: ARE YOU INVOLVED WITH ANY INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS? WATTERS: We have developed an overload truck routing system which uses GIS (Geographical Information Systems) and our BRASS-GIRDER program. When a trucking firm wishes to transport an overweight load across any route in the state, our application prompts the user for the load information, and analyzes every structure along the proposed route automatically and determines if there are any bridges which cannot carry the load. The program also automatically checks to see if slowing the truck to five m.p.h. over the bridge or restricting passage of only one vehicle over the bridge will allow the overload to pass over the bridge. We hope to expand this application to automatically check horizontal and vertical clearances for oversize loads.
DGN: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST COMMON TECHNOLOGIES YOU USE FOR BRIDGE ANALYSIS?
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