US Bridge Condition & Scour Risk Monitor — FHWA NBI

Screen the FHWA National Bridge Inventory (NBI) — 620,000+ US highway bridges — by state, overall condition (Poor / Fair / Good), and scour-critical status, and get back a normalized record per bridge with a composite 0–100 risk score.

Data comes straight from the official NTAD (National Transportation Atlas Database) ArcGIS service published by the US DOT — no API key, no scraping fragile HTML. Over 41,000 US bridges are currently rated in Poor condition; this actor finds them, ranks them, and flags why.

What the risk score adds (the transform)

Raw NBI dumps give you 100+ cryptic coded columns. This actor turns each bridge into a decision-ready row:

• risk_score (0–100) = condition weight (Poor ≫ Fair ≫ Good) × scour-critical factor (item 113 codes 0–3 boost) × inspection-overdue factor (months since last inspection vs. the designated interval) × log-scaled traffic exposure (ADT). Higher = riskier. The worst possible combination (Poor + scour failure + 2× past inspection + 100k ADT) scores 100.
• risk_flags[] — machine-readable: poor_condition, scour_critical, inspection_overdue, posted_or_closed, closed, fracture_critical, high_traffic_poor, scour_unknown, no_inspection_on_record.
• Decoded fields — condition letters → labels, owner code → agency name, MMYY inspection dates → ISO YYYY-MM, state FIPS → postal code.

Who uses this

• Bridge engineering & inspection firms — build target lists of Poor / scour-critical / overdue bridges by state or county for business development.
• Infrastructure investors & muni-bond analysts — screen the bridge stock behind an issuer or geography before pricing risk.
• P&C and infrastructure insurers — exposure screening around portfolios.
• DOT contractors — find rehab candidates before RFPs drop.
• Journalists & researchers — "how many Poor, load-posted, high-traffic bridges are in my state?" answered in one run.

Example input

{
  "states": ["CO"],
  "conditions": ["P"],
  "scourCriticalOnly": false,
  "minADT": 1000,
  "minRiskScore": 25,
  "maxResults": 500
}

States accept postal codes ("CO"), full names ("Colorado"), or FIPS ("08"). Leave states and conditions empty to scan the national inventory (bounded by maxResults). Empty input never fails — it runs a bounded default.

Output fields

One record per bridge: structure_number, state, state_fips, county_code, facility_carried, features_desc, location, condition, condition_code, deck_cond, superstructure_cond, substructure_cond, culvert_cond, lowest_rating, scour_critical, scour_critical_flag, last_inspection_date (ISO YYYY-MM), months_since_inspection, inspection_frequency_months, inspection_overdue, adt, adt_year, year_built, owner_code, owner, open_closed_posted_code, posted_or_closed, fracture_critical, risk_score, risk_flags, lat, lon, source_url.

Use as an MCP tool

This actor is callable by AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) via mcp.apify.com — the input and output schemas are fully described at field level, so an agent can ask for "scour-critical Poor bridges in Texas over 10,000 ADT" and chain the scored rows into reports, maps, or alerts.

FAQ

How many bridges are in poor condition in the US? 41,000+ structures carry an overall FHWA condition rating of Poor. Run this actor with "conditions": ["P"] and no state filter for the national list.

What does scour critical mean for a bridge? Scour — streambed erosion around foundations — is the leading cause of US bridge failures. NBI item 113 codes 0–3 mean the foundations are rated unstable or have failed; set "scourCriticalOnly": true to get only those.

How do I find bridges with overdue inspections? Every row includes inspection_overdue, comparing months since the last routine inspection (item 90) against the designated interval (item 91). Filter the dataset on that flag or set minRiskScore to surface the worst.

Where does the data come from and how fresh is it? The US DOT NTAD National Bridge Inventory ArcGIS service — the official annual FHWA NBI submission published by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. It is keyless, public, and updated on FHWA's release cycle.

Is this a load rating or engineering assessment? No. The risk score is a screening heuristic over official FHWA data — prioritize with it, then verify against the underlying record (source_url returns the full raw NBI row for each bridge).

Pricing

Pay per result: each returned bridge record is one billable event. Empty result sets cost only the actor start. Use maxResults, state, and condition filters to keep runs exactly as large as you need.