It's an exciting time to be involved in construction and building technology, says James T. Garret, a civil and environmental engineering professor and lab director at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He says there is a huge need for instrumentation and monitoring of infrastructure to better build, manage, protect and maintain it. "A $30,000 BMW has more sensors and monitors on it than a $10-million bridge," he notes.
Yet the potential of technology only starts to be realized when people perceive possibilities and systematically examine them. That's the nature of research.