Trust Layers for Automated Bridge Management Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Abstract: Bridge management is increasingly automated through continuous monitoring, AI-based diagnostics, and digitally coordinated interventions. Yet, current workflows rarely provide end-to-end verifiability: sensor datasets, off-chain computations, and resulting maintenance decisions are difficult to audit across multiple stakeholders. This paper proposes a trust-layered architecture that combines decentralized storage, verifiable computation, and blockchain governance to make monitoring-to-action pipelines tamper-evident and reproducible. The paper discusses how smart contracts can orchestrate inspection and maintenance playbooks, while computation integrity can be certified via Trusted Execution Environments or zero-knowledge proofs. Trade-offs in scalability, privacy, and compliance are analyzed, outlining practical deployment patterns for bridge lifecycles.