• • • SMART BUILDINGS & IOT• • •
IoT and smart infrastructure Phil Beecher, president and CEO, Wi-SUN Alliance
hen it comes to IoT, some of the most exciting areas for growth are in smart cities where we can expect to see some real innovation and a wave of applications coming in the next few years. From our own perspective as a global alliance, we are already seeing members involved in the rollout of major smart streetlighting projects, including the City of London, Paris and Miami.
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It is in the area of smart infrastructure and smart buildings where IoT sensors and other connected devices will support more critical applications, including remote monitoring, structural integrity diagnostics, disaster management and emergency response planning. With safety and security in mind, together with not inconsiderable cost considerations, smart infrastructure solutions can enhance monitoring and surveillance, as well as predictive maintenance on structures like bridges, tunnels and buildings.
Investment in smart infrastructure management is growing, the market is projected to grow from $923 billion in 2024 to $2,109 billion by 2029 with Japan already leading the way. Driven by government-backed initiatives, including a policy aimed at extending the life of the country’s aged civil infrastructure, IoT technology is being deployed in everything from bridges and tunnels to steel towers, ensuring the maintenance and management is more efficient. Japan’s ministry of land, infrastructure, transport, and tourism announced its i-construction initiative almost 10 years ago to improve productivity in all construction production processes from survey to design, inspection, maintenance and renewal. It is also adopting smart technology to improve productivity within the civil engineering and construction space resulting from a skills shortage, with the number of workers on construction sites expected to decline by 1.3
million. Infrastructure monitoring is seen as a crucial measure within this policy.
Some member companies have been supporting the deployment of IoT in markets like Japan, helping to bolster the maintenance and management of critical infrastructure in several ways, these include.
Monitoring of pier inclination; to check usability and safety in the event of a disaster, such as a large flood.
Cable tension monitoring of cable-stayed bridges; to monitor and assess cable condition, both throughout the product lifetime and because of stress, such as heavy traffic.
Slope and embankment monitoring; to monitor and assess the potential deterioration resulting from heavy rain or earthquakes.
Monitoring of highway lighting columns; used to
identify loose fixings that may arise from vibrations, age or traffic accidents.
These use cases only scratch the surface of the overall potential of IoT in powering smart infrastructure. If we take the previous example of smart lighting, functional lighting can become
integral to city operations through IoT, supporting functions well beyond their traditional remit, such as being used to deploy additional sensors and devices. Sensors can then be used to monitor traffic flow, road temperatures, air quality and pollution levels, or in the case of the City of London, to identify missing lifebelts on the River Thames. The one common theme of using IoT in critical infrastructure scenarios is sensors. But for them to work reliably and effectively, they need a secure, robust and reliable network infrastructure that will ensure they stay connected and deliver optimal results.
Mesh networking like Wi-SUN FAN provides a communications infrastructure for large scale outdoor networks, allowing devices like streetlights to interconnect onto one common network, becoming the foundation from which smart city infrastructure can be built up from. When it comes to critical infrastructure, safety and security is paramount. Adopting a security-by-design approach, device authentication and encryption are the central pillars of IoT security, ensuring each device is uniquely identifiable with digital certificates, and authenticated when joining a network. Ease of use and scalability also removes the opportunity for complexity to hinder infrastructure deployments, while adopting a standardised communications technology means multiple vendors and devices can leverage a single network deployment. Interoperability between third party products allows the network to be used for multiple applications, providing an opportunity to roll out additional smart city use cases and devices in the future.
Large-scale IoT networks will be critical to the success of smart infrastructure use cases, as they continue to evolve over the next few years, allowing them to operate safely, securely and reliably.
34 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • SEPTEMBER 2024
electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk
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