Design, construction, maintenance, and upgrading of civil engineering infrastructure requires fresh thinking to minimize the use of materials, energy, and labor. This can only be achieved by understanding the performance of the infrastructure, both during its construction and throughout its design life, through innovative monitoring. Advances in sensor systems and data analytic tools offer intriguing possibilities to radically alter condition assessment methods and monitoring of infrastructure. In this talk, it is hypothesized that the future of infrastructure relies on smarter information; the rich information obtained from embedded sensors within infrastructure, along with associated data-driven analysis, will act as a catalyst for new design, construction, operation, and maintenance processes for integrated infrastructure systems. Some examples of applying emerging technologies to realize smart buried infrastructure are given. They include distributed fiber-optics sensors, wireless sensor networks, machine learning and multi-scale infrastructure system simulations.

About Dr.Kenichi Soga

Kenichi Soga is the Donald H. McLaughlin Professor at UC Berkeley. Soga is also the Director of the Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure, a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and serves as a Special Advisor to the Dean of the College of Engineering for Resilient and Sustainable Systems. Soga’s research focuses on infrastructure sensing, performance-based design and maintenance of infrastructure, energy geotechnics, and geomechanics. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the Engineering Academy of Japan. He is the recipient of several notable awards, including the George Stephenson Medal and Telford Gold Medal from ICE in 2006, the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from ASCE in 2007, and the UCB Bakar Prize for his work on commercialization of smart infrastructure technologies in 2022.