ANALYSIS AND OPINION SMART INFRASTRUCTURE
Fibre optics take the strain in construction
Researchers at the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction give their views on three infrastructure projects analysing structural performance using fibre optic monitoring
CSIC director Jennifer Schooling, OBE, on generating richer information from sensor monitoring
T
he abundance of data in the 21st century creates exciting
new opportunities for the infrastructure and construction sector to gain new insights into how infrastructure systems are performing. The Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) is doing this through realising the full value of data generated from monitoring systems to generate a better understanding of the behaviour of our assets. CSIC has deployed
and validated new sensor technologies on more than 100 infrastructure and construction project sites. Data analytics enables us to distil large amounts of sensing data into information to inform decision- making on how to increase capacity, efficiency, reliability, and resilience, which ultimately yields benefits for users of the assets.
This opportunity is not
limited to new infrastructure; there is also considerable potential to improve the condition and management of our existing infrastructure. This is significant, as the value of infrastructure in use
Sponsored by
“Effective maintenance of assets offers a more sustainable approach to increasing capacity”
is substantially greater than the value of infrastructure in development. In fact, each year construction of new assets adds just 0.5 per cent to the capital value of all UK infrastructure[1]
.
Effective maintenance of existing assets offers a more sustainable approach to increasing capacity, resilience
The Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction is an Innovation and Knowledge Centre, based at the new Civil Engineering Building at the University of Cambridge. It has been developing distributed fibre optic sensor systems for more than a decade.
www.centreforsmartinfrastructure.com
and longevity of infrastructure systems, reducing the need to construct new assets and hence avoiding the sizeable carbon emissions incurred in the process.
Mitigating climate change CSIC hosted a round table at the 2018 Global Engineering Congress to focus on the role of data as an engineering tool in mitigating climate change[2] The round table included
.
infrastructure engineers and owners, sustainability professionals, academics and representatives of development banks and the insurance sector. The discussions highlighted
the role that civil engineers have to play in climate change
10 Electro Optics October 2019
mitigation, including gaining a clear understanding of the carbon emissions arising from design, construction and management activities. Data from sensing and other
sources is vital to enable us to quantify carbon emissions and take measures to reduce them by informing decisions on materials use, waste, and construction and operation processes.
References [1]
[2]
Smart Infrastructure: Getting more from strategic assets, CSIC and industry partners, June 2017
Smart Sustainability: Exploiting data in engineering to mitigate climate change, CSIC and round- table participants, June 2019
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