Towards intelligent civil infrastructure

We present our vision of civil engineering in the coming ten years. With the help of a number of research case studies, we will show how radical developments in telecommunications and sensor technologies are about to change the way that civil engineering design and infrastructure maintenance are conceived and carried out. Indeed, within the next ten years smart structural elements with embedded sensors and systems capable of self-diagnosis will be a normal part of buildings. Whereas today the structural engineer conceives the single building or bridge as a stand-alone project, in future it is likely that structures will be regarded as cells in a complex being - the civil infrastructure network.