IoT Instrumentation in the Execution and Maintenance of Large Projects: is it Time yet?
The civil works sector has progressed and matured; thanks to IoT, monitoring solutions that were unthinkable until recently can be implemented.
For some time now, any civil works or automation magazine, congress, or event has presented the benefits of IoT in this sector, but few are the success stories with a known or close real return. It is evident that the predictions about the deployment of sensors during 2017 and 2018 have not been fulfilled, nor will they likely be fulfilled in 2019 – the hype sold during these years has generated understandable skepticism.
Currently, in the execution or management of large projects and their subsequent maintenance, large projects beyond BMS systems or intelligent climate control are not usually found. Even so, it must be recognized that the sector has not stood still during this time, but has continued to learn and improve, not only technologically but also functionally. Any IoT node that is used during the execution of a project or to monitor it later must have the necessary characteristics to be able to provide real value in a sustainable manner.
Today, it is unrealistic to think that in an unpowered environment, a physical magnitude can be monitored in real time for a period of weeks or months uninterruptedly – an unfeasible amount of batteries would be needed. However, technology and the state of the art do allow something very similar. The sector’s more mature degree of knowledge already allows finding – and demanding – solutions with the following characteristics:
a.- Long service life, as has been mentioned, a large part of the return on this type of deployment is marked by the durability of the installed nodes. Therefore, the life of the battery – and the different consumption methods – must be studied, but it must also be ensured that the device can work in that environment, which typically implies being able to work outdoors, with high doses of dust, humidity, extreme temperature ranges, vibrations, resistance to shocks, etc.
b.- Quick and easy installation. The environment where these devices are going to be installed is not the same as an industrial or office one; therefore, for convenience and deployment times, equipment that can be installed in an agile manner is needed. In the same way, they must allow a complete pre-configuration so that only placement will be necessary in the field. This point gains interest the greater the number of deployed equipment.
c.- Remote management. In the same way that a team should be required to be easily installed, the same should be expected about its management. Both because of its location and because of the number of devices deployed, if an engineer must be sent to reconfigure all the equipment in the event of a change – of parameters or firmware, for example – it ceases to be a viable option. Therefore, the so-called OTAP – over-the-air programming – must be required, so that changes can be implemented remotely and massively. Working with a complete solution from the field to the control center saves manual and visual inspections, greatly optimizing revisions and maintenance cycles.
d.- Equipment with intelligence. Equipment with the capacity to make decisions autonomously is needed to maximize its usefulness and its service life. To give an example, if the equipment is a sensor, if the reading is within the normal parameters, it must have a sampling and information sending frequency different from if the reading is outside these limits. In the same way, it must be possible for the equipment to activate an output if, when acquiring a signal, it is deemed appropriate for what this entails.
e.- Scalable and mobile architectures. All the components of the solution must allow or have solved how to deploy all the equipment not only of the current phase, but also of the future ones. This implies at the level of communications, at the level of gateways, at the level of management or at the level of the value monitoring system.
Similarly, there is a growing trend to use this type of solution in mobile scenarios, either because the node itself is in continuous movement – fleet management, for example – or because it is used for a certain time in one place and then moved to another location – environmental or noise controls, for example. This implies that the equipment must be able to geolocate itself, in the same way that this information must be able to be seen on the visualization and control platform.
And evidently, cybersecurity and interoperability must be taken into account, as well as the use of standards and any indispensable requirement of any monitoring and/or control solution.
Devices with these characteristics allow going one step further in the interaction with the works and infrastructures. Not only can the classic physical magnitudes such as temperature, flow or humidity be monitored, but it is already possible to integrate vibration sensors, air quality – with different parameters –, chemical state of soils or liquids, noise levels, people/vehicle counters, etc. into low-consumption devices, which allows imagining new applications or optimizing existing ones.
An example of a new project would be the continuous monitoring of an infrastructure such as a bridge, specifically its vibration level when it is open to traffic. This value is an indicator of the state of this infrastructure and how much maintenance it needs before collapsing.
In countries with a high degree of seismic movements, vibration meters powered on the bridges are installed. These sensors are connected to a bridge balancing system to compensate for a possible seismic movement, in the same way as is done in buildings. However, in countries like ours, where these control systems are not installed, the way to monitor their vibration level is through periodic visits from their maintainer. An operator travels in situ and measures it. With a low-consumption solution installed in said location, two clear improvements are achieved: the first is the savings involved in sending someone to each bridge each time, the second point is that monitoring is also improved since a measurement is obtained in intervals of seconds or minutes instead of every few days, weeks or even months.
Following the previous example of vibrations, a direct application for the optimization of existing systems is the monitoring of the impact of a large project. Faced with works that involve large displacements of land – such as a large new building or a tunnel in the mountains or underground – many more control points can be added at a much lower cost. In this way, there is a real knowledge of the impact of the works and of their initial and final state. In addition, the control points can be changed location as the work progresses.
That is why devices with an ‘IoT label’ not only serve to give an innovative brand image, but can be used to obtain safe, efficient and economic/profitable results. All this complying with the standards expected in this type of system that we have commented on: service life, easy installation, remote management, intelligence and scalability.
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