This week’s Smart Infrastructure roundup features a smart tunnel and solar roads paving the way to the future.

Smart tunnel advances infrastructure construction

Engineers from Cambridge University have turned a portion of the old London Post Office tunnel into a smart one by placing new sensors that are able to measure disturbances coming from nearby construction work, such as the new Crossrail being constructed which runs close to the old tunnel.

The sensors will gather information on how constructions on Crossrail can affect the old tunnel such as if it’s coming under strain, moving, and how the construction is affecting buildings on top of it.  The old Post Office tunnel is made of cast iron and was in use for 75 years to transport letters across London.  Cast iron becomes brittle with age and the construction of the Crossrail, which in some parts is just 20cm apart, could cause the tunnel to collapse.

The new sensors installed include fiber optics that shows if the tunnel gets deformed or bent; an ultra low-power sensor that measure temperature, humidity, acceleration and tilt; and a sensor that uses photogrammetry, or computer vision, to visually detect movements as small as 0.1mm in the tunnel.

“When you design a tunnel, you’re conservative because of all the unpredictable things you can’t measure when you excavate,” Mehdi Alhaddad, a researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CISC), said in an interview.

“But if you could measure how much the existing tunnels will move, how much the buildings on top will move with high level of confidence, then you could be more efficient in construction, you could be quicker, use less material, loosen the safety procedures and that would save huge amounts of money.”

Solar Roadways

They say having smooth paved roads is one of the signs of an advanced or modern city, but what about having solar panels in roads able to power homes and buildings or even charge your electric vehicle?  Sci-fi, you say?  What if I told you that you might soon see this kind of pavement in Sandpoint, Idaho?

Solar Roadways are a modular paving system of solar panels which can be used in highways, parking lots, driveways, bike paths, playgrounds or on anything that can be paved.  It can generate electricity for homes and buildings via a connected driveway or parking space, making way for the production of renewable clean energy and possibly eliminating the need for fossil-based energy sources.  Solar Roadways can withstand the heaviest of trucks weighing about 250,000 pounds with an added perk of heating roads so it doesn’t ice up when it snows.  Solar Roadways can turn parking lots and roads into charging roads for EVs, light up road lines and signage for better visibility no matter the weather, and in the future, could even provide information directly to drivers alerting them of incoming obstacles or even traffic situations.

Solar Roadways received funding from the US Federal Highway Administration t research and develop the paving system and it is currently raising funds on Indiegogo to build its prototype parking lot.  The funding period ends on June 20, 2014, but Solar Roadways has already raised over $2 million.

If successful, the US could be one of the first countries to widely use renewable energy sources.

photo credit: Jeff Attaway via photopin cc; marcovdz via photopin cc