A Look Inside Spain’s Roman and Medieval Bridges

VIGO, SPAIN—With the help of mathematical models, ground-penetrating radar, and a laser scanner, researchers from the Applied Geotechnology Group at the University of Vigo evaluated more than 80 Roman and medieval bridges. The technology helped them to identify unknown structural and geometric details that may be covered with stones or buried underground, cracks, engravings, and past restorations. “All this information is of historic interest, but it is also useful to civil engineers so that they can plan conservation, improvement and restoration measures in these types of infrastructures,” Mercedes Solla of the Defense Academy told Science Daily.