Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] Talk to me. Information, news, and entertainment on demand. WUSradio.com. 0:11 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. [upbeat music] Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:26 My next guest has leveraged his extensive knowledge of sensors to take on growing networks and systems for a variety of critical infrastructure projects. 0:36 His work has allowed for more dynamic modeling and simulation, as well as risk assessment. Please join me in welcoming Andrew Smith, Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia Engineering. 0:51 Andrew, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. So Andrew, I'm, I'm delighted to have you on the show. 0:58 So let's talk about, which we've been, uh, all morning I've been talking about remote monitoring, and I've been talking about the changes in security and so many different things right now. 1:07 But I'm, I'm interested in how you see what's happening with structural and health monitoring and control because now you're looking at it from a different perspective. 1:18 And I'd love for our listeners to understand what your work has been because I think when we look at remote monitoring, and we look at security and things, there's a lot of things we have to take into consideration. 1:28 So I'd love to get your take on it right now. Sure. Yeah. So I work in an area which is called, as you said, structural health monitoring. 1:36 So it's, it's no secret that, uh, America's infrastructure is, is kind of in poor condition for a, you know, first world, uh, country. And so many of us- That's being kind... in civil engineering have sort of 1:49 looked at, uh, you know, sensing as a way to get, get basically a, a tight read on that. And so we use sensors to get quantitative information basically on condition of, uh, infrastructure. 2:03 And when you talk about that, I mean, you said poor. I'm, I'm gonna be saying that that's kind because we're really in a very bad shape. I mean, it's not... 2:11 I mean, for someone like us, when we talk about the United States, we should certainly be a lot better than we are. 2:16 And I think right now when we look at that, there's no reason in some ways that the, the infrastructure in roads and bridges and things are in such a poor condition. 2:26 And so I think when you're-- we're using sensors, we should know a lot better, and we shouldn't have such failings, and in some cases, catastrophic problems, I mean, you know, that we have. 2:38 We have these sinkholes and things that happen that we find out and we lose lives from it. 2:43 So let's talk about the benefits or what we should be using the technology to solve some of the major problems that we have long before they happen, and we're still not doing it like we could. Absolutely. Yeah. 2:57 So I look at the sensor information as kind of a way to, to manage our problems as like a triage, uh, in a, in an operating room. 3:05 So i-if you have sensors out on, on civil infrastructure, and you build a kind of a parallel model, like a mathematical model of that, uh, infrastructure piece, let's say it's a big bridge or something. 3:18 In New York City, we have plenty of those. 3:21 Um, we're able to kind of detect then changes over time, and those changes or anomalies in, in the sensor information, we can then associate and correlate with, with damage basically, which might be due to corrosion, fatigue or, or other kinds of, um, exposures that might happen over time. 3:42 So a-as you probably know, like, uh, American Society for Civil Engineers, for example, gives, uh, US infrastructure something like a D+ grade. So, so it's nothing to be, uh, particularly proud of. 3:55 And I think it's just really generation of underinvestment in, in infrastructure. 3:59 So this is kind of a necessary intervention, and it's, it's one that as a civil engineer, you feel definitely responsible, uh, for, for trying to, to, to make a, a difference there. And, and think about that. 4:12 When we talk about sensors and, and we know that that can help rebuild our critical infrastructure. 4:18 Are we at this point when we say you've talked about these anomalies, and we've talked about the ASCE giving us a D+, and we've talked about that on the show in the past, and we've written articles about it in ConstructTalk and even on Connected World. 4:30 We know the problems. Is our- Right. -solutions at this point because we're not doing... Is, is it a money problem? Is it a political problem? 4:40 I mean, we, we can do things that can put out there that we could say, "Look, we can do some vibration analysis factors into all of this." Yep. I mean, we can do some things that could give us the information. 4:52 Why aren't we doing more of it so we don't have these bridges fa- I mean, we have some historical bridges that are failing. Absolutely. That's kind of sad. 5:00 I mean, that's what I think is the, probably the most pathetic s- part of this, is that we're seeing some of our history falling apart when we could actually be rectifying that. 5:12 I think it's, uh, you s- you mentioned political and, and financial, um, frictions or impediments to doing this. I think it really is both of those. 5:20 Um, it's probably a drop in the bucket, the, the amount that, that, that, let's say, a researcher like me spends wh- or when I'm working together with an engineering consulting firm to, to assess a bridge using vibration sensors, for example. 5:36 That's a tiny fraction of the, of the capital [chuckles] cost of that, that bridge. But the other part of it is, is sometimes I think investing in gaining knowledge 5:47 behooves the, the agency or the owner of, of whatever critical infrastructure to do something, and sometimes it might not be on the timetable that, that they were expecting. 5:57 And, and so there i-- I think there's perhaps a nervousness sometimes to, to, to gain all of that insight and knowledge. 6:05 But I, I, I would just advocate thatGoing forward, let's say all new infrastructure have, uh, y-you know, requirements, uh, for embedded sensing, uh- Well- -and sensing that can actually, you know, last as long as the, as the infrastructure itself, the design life of the infrastructure. 6:24 Well, look at the homes we just had and some of these natural disasters that we had. Hurricane Harvey, and I've, I've talked about that on, on some of the shows in the past. 6:32 We, we built residential communities that we shouldn't have. We knew that those were not- Absolutely... the best way. Why did we do that? 6:40 I mean, it just seems to me, and, and you're talking about being an engineer, just didn't make sense to me. 6:44 I mean, do we have things that we did because it was the, you know, some politician said, "Well, this is a great place." I mean, I mean, somebody did this, and yet now what do we do? We've got to rebuild this? 6:56 And, and, you know, in previous years we did things smarter in Florida after we knew, you know, it's hurricane season, so we did things better. 7:04 But again, sensors would give us the information to know what's gonna happen. And again, that's what you're saying. I mean, we have the technology, people. I mean, that's what I'm thinking about, right? 7:15 No, you're, you're absolutely right. It's, it's a very, uh, [laughs] similar kind of situation, and it's, it's not a... 7:21 You know, these are political, social, uh, pressures that are leading us to do things sometimes that are really not, not resilient, not sustainable. 7:30 Uh, so in that case, it's a land use question, but, but for me it, it might have to do with, uh, you know, an investment, uh, an intervention that might be needed sooner rather than waiting till later. 7:42 So as you guys as professors who are doing all of this research, you see things. I mean, you guys go- Mm-hmm... out there, and gals, you do really due diligence on this. 7:51 And what do you envision remote monitoring sensors will, and how they'll continue to evolve? 7:57 Because I not only see this as important, I see it as essential and even lifesaving to a lot of things when we look at what we know. I just, I... It's common sense to me here. 8:10 We're, we're squabbling about a lot of things on Capitol Hill, that we have Republicans and Democrats, and I'm not gonna get into a political thing, but it just seems to me there's more important things we should be doing. 8:21 And you as, as researchers and, and professors are doing the work that says, "Look, you know what? This is really important stuff." Right. 8:31 So I think the, the one thing that would help us a lot, and, and it's a, it's kind of a small market still, so commercialization of, of these sensors. There are small companies that are popping up. 8:41 Obviously IoT, that wave is, has been, has been, I think will be a tremendous, uh, help for this, this kind of a field. 8:49 But commercialization of small sensors, cheap sensors that can wirelessly network, uh, pretty easily over long ranges. So in, in civil infrastructure, sometimes we're... Well, usually we're, we're monitoring big things, 9:04 and in fairly hostile [laughs] environments in, in terms of climate and, and everything else. Uh, so to have robust sensing that's relatively cheap, uh, as I said, good wireless range, um, those types of things... 9:20 Oh, and, and time synchronization, that's a very important thing. If you have a wireless network, you need, for me, you need a very good time synchronization. 9:27 So there's sort of technical things that I wish would just kind of come, move along a little bit faster because all of us in, in the research community are using, uh, bits of off-the-shelf hardware here and there that, that we collect, or there are some of us that are actually developing, uh, sensor packages as well, like very custom specialized, uh, sensor packages. 9:48 So- Andrew, I guess the- It's just, uh, we're on the leading edge, and we just need more. Yeah. I guess the other part of this that's important for me is the next generation. 9:57 I mean, you're, you're looking at this as researchers. How do we get the next generation of learners to contribute to your vision? Because I think that's important, especially when I look at construction. 10:07 We don't have- Yeah... this, and we've got about a minute and a half. We don't have... We're, we're not motivating the next generation of construction. We got a, a labor shortage. 10:15 How do we get graduates to come into school that want to do what you're doing to see this is a viable alternative? Get into school. This is the contribution you could be making. Right. 10:27 I think the, the, one of the big trends that also is really exciting and exciting certainly for our students is this area of big data. 10:34 And, and this is one of the things that, that some of us will spend a lot of time, or we spend our, our careers earning degrees to develop very sophisticated physics-based models of this kind of damage that we can track with sensor data. 10:46 But sometimes you might be able to, in a much simpler way, using deep learning or other kinds of data science and data analytics techniques, you may be able to detect those kinds of anomalies. 10:57 So that it could turn out to be a sort of a, a, a high tech sector of its own to monitor and model and simulate infrastructure, entire cities and, and networks, uh, using, using big data. 11:10 So there are all sorts of new data sources. So to me that's, that's a potentially very exciting and I think an appealing, uh, sector for students. 11:19 So maybe our way to get everybody in Capitol Hill to stop, stop squabbling is to say, "This is the future of our next generation of leaders who have to invent the next great thing." I don't know, it's just my thought. 11:31 Well, Andrew, we're out of time, but quickly, where can our listeners go to learn more about what you guys are doing? What's your URL? Oh, it's, uh, for me, it's at, uh, www.civil.columbia.edu. All right. 11:45 Andrew, thank you so much. I hope you'll come back and talk to us again. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks. It was a pleasure. All right, listeners, we're out of time. Stick around. 11:53 We've got more to come right here on the Peggy Smedley Show. We'll be right back. 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