A 32-acre, $6.5-million mini-city at the University of Michigan looks like a film set, with building facades that mask empty interiors or surround vacant lots. But the infrastructure in the ghost town is technologically advanced, with sensors and cameras attached to traffic signals that communicate with the cars on the street.
Map Courtesy of MoDOT Related Links: Smart Roads Ahead: The Rise of Intelligent Infrastructure The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission (MHTC) will open a 200-mile stretch of Interstate 70, from Kansas City to St. Louis, to private industry for use as a “laboratory” for construction of future generations of highways. The Missouri Dept. of Transportation oversees “The Road to Tomorrow” project.Since June, MHTC has received about 180 proposals from academia and business, says Tom Blair, project leader and MoDOT assistant district engineer, St. Louis. He will present the 20 most promising submissions to MHTC in December.Blair says he and his
Photo Courtesy of N.H. DOT Related Links: Smart Roads Ahead: The Rise of Intelligent Infrastructure Smart vehicles, stupid infrastructure—that’s a phrase often invoked by Ted Zoli, national bridge chief engineer for HNTB, when he talks about the advent of connected vehicles that communicate with each other. He asks, will smart vehicles communicate with infrastructure? And will future infrastructure communicate with engineers?The answer is yes, he predicts. Further, he designed a test bed, the Memorial Bridge, which runs over the Piscataqua River between New Hampshire and Maine. The 1,200-ft-long, two-year-old bridge is becoming a “living bridge”—a piece of self-diagnosing, self-reporting smart
With the exponentially increasing ability to capture and analyze vast quantities of data from objects—bridge piers and pavements, for example—the dream of an intelligent transportation infrastructure (ITI) is within reach.
Related Links: The Digit Group The Digit Group Inc., Memphis, Tenn. designs smart cities, like Kingdom City in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In doing so, its CEO, Paul Doherty says the company is rethinking urban design. And they're changing it too, from the width of city streets, to the necessity of traffic signals and parking lots and even how the buildings communicate with one another. Doherty took a moment to give his thoughts on smart infrastructure and what he calls the Internet of Buildings.He told ENR how he sees city design changing the way we will build in the future and
A new mobile application for iOS devices allows users to pin site plans to their location on Earth by integrating with Apple Maps. Then, they can take site photos and make annotations and markups on the plans.
Researchers have designed a 3D-printed electric car and a 3D-printed building that fuel each other. A demonstration of additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, and integrated energy, the project also uses a natural-gas generator to power the car's battery bank and the house's battery bank.
Enlarge Courtesy University of Michigan The University of Michigan's M-City is a faux town made to test autonomous vehicle technology. Courtesy University of Michigan A map shows all of M-City's transportation nuances, which are embedded to allow for testing in many traffic conditions and situations. A 32-acre, $6.5-million mini city at the University of Michigan looks like a film set, with building facades that mask empty interiors and vacant lots. But special attention is paid to the details of the infrastructure in this ghost town. Roadways and traffic signals look technologically advanced, with sensors and cameras that communicate with the
When a buried oil pipeline at a station on the Trans Alaska Pipeline System sprung a leak, the pipeline company faced a costly problem: Scrap the piping below ground and rebuild above ground or find technology that could inspect the original line.