CMI's Smart Infrastructure KIC is running an interactive workshop to provide an overview of Wireless Sensor Technology and concentrate on how it can be applied to civil engineering applications.

CMI's Smart Infrastructure KIC is a community of researchers at Cambridge and MIT, working with industrial partners to develop and test innovative new sensor systems to monitor infrastructure both above and below ground. Our work has many applications - in piles, tunnels, pipelines, highway slopes and reservoirs, to name but a few.

Background

CMI's Smart Infrastructure KIC has been researching a number of ways of improving our capabilities for efficiently maintaining and protecting infrastructure. Whether in the form of buildings, tunnels or bridges, infrastructure is liable to deteriorate as it ages. And it can be affected by movement in the surrounding / supporting ground, either caused by natural events - such as flood, heave or landslip - or third-party activities, such as new construction taking place close to existing infrastructure. These failures can have complex causes and catastrophic consequences. Reactive response/ maintenance can be expensive, but the new development of new hardware and new monitoring technologies offers an increase in our ability to monitor and manage infrastructure, at lower cost.

Our researchers are evaluating three technologies that can help us: wireless - which offers new models for monitoring, MEMS - which offers functionality alongside miniaturisation and low power consumption, and optical fibre sensor technologies - which offer a full strain profile over long distances (eg of tunnels and pipelines).

Wireless Workshop

On 1st - 2nd February 2006, we are running an interactive workshop to provide an overview of Wireless Sensor Technology and concentrate on how it can be applied to civil engineering applications.

Currently the number, location, reading frequency and even type of sensors that engineers can use to monitor infrastructure have been limited by the ability to obtain data from them. Being able to communicate wirelessly with a network of sensors offers the possibility of mining high density, multi-parameter, real time data from them. This would revolutionise the way engineers install and use sensors for monitoring and condition assessment of infrastructure.

We have run a number of field trials of such wireless sensor networks, including a recent field deployment for the Boston Water and Sewerage Company which provided real time data for different parameters accessed through a website. We shall be reporting on this work at the event. Such field trials provide valuable insights into current state-of-the art wireless sensor networks, so we will follow up our presentations and demonstrations by working with participants - from a variety of disciplines - to identify their requirements for a generic platform that can be used to make informed engineering decisions.

The workshop - which is free to attend - includes talks, hands-on demonstrations, networking opportunities and dinner in Jesus College. The workshop will run from 2pm on 1st February to 1pm on 2nd February. Overnight accommodation can be arranged.