Briefing: Advanced sensing technologies for structural health monitoring

The engineering, management, maintenance and upgrading of infrastructure requires fresh thinking to minimise the use of materials, energy and labour while still ensuring resilience. This can only be achieved by a full understanding of the performance of the infrastructure, both during its construction and throughout its design life, through the application of innovative sensor technologies and other emerging technologies. This approach covers the design and commissioning, construction process, exploitation and use and eventual decommissioning. Crucial elements of these emerging technologies are the innovative application of the latest sensor technologies, data management tools, manufacturing processes and supply chain management processes to the construction industry, both during infrastructure construction and throughout its design life. In particular, advances in sensing technologies such as fibre-optic sensors and wireless sensor networks for structural health monitoring have a huge potential to transform the approaches to the design, the construction and the operation of an infrastructure. This briefing article gives some examples of the recent application of these advanced sensing technologies to structural health monitoring for a large number of construction sites and existing infrastructure.