Achieving Model-Based Design for the Smart Grid
Smart Meters and SCADA Contribute a Big Data Perspective Smart meters and intelligent electronic devices provide granular data about the state of the utility network in near real-time. The availability of such data is in no small part what is making the smart grid, well, smart. Now, this data is being harnessed by utilities for greater customer insight and designs that are informed by performance. In one sense, the smart-grid is a dynamic real-time system that adapts and heals as condition...
Sewer Heat Recovery Provides Low-Cost Recycled Energy
In every urban area, heat that humans have generated to shower, wash clothes, cook, and so on flows underground — in the sewers, making them very warm. Today, sewers represent the largest source of heat leakage in buildings. Even toilet water, which is at room temperature, is warm compared to the ground. Sewer air, pipe material (and thus conductivity), surrounding soil type, and other factors also affect the final temperature of waste water, according to Genevieve Tokgoz, Project Engineer in th...
A Tidal Shift in Water Network Management
Water consumption worldwide is on the steepest of hockey stick curves—since 1950, annual consumption has tripled, and in 2006 passed 4,300 km3… that’s about 30% of the available supply of renewable water. Water consumption is expanding considerably faster than population growth—more than double the rate—and much of that growth is due to irrigation. Numbers like that mean that most regions, and especially densely populated areas, are thinking and planning seriously when it comes to water suppl...
Roadway Sensors Provide Real-Time and Historic Data
Robert Bray is a senior software architect at Autodesk, Inc., a computer aided design firm that readers may have heard about. He recently sat down with Informed Infrastructure to discuss his view of sensored roadways, and the uses of the information they develop. Informed Infrastructure: Robert, can you tell us how you came to be interested in sensored roadways? Bray: At Autodesk, I'm primarily responsible for the Infrastructure Suite, including our roadway and utility design products, and...
Toward Intelligent Infrastructure
The United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT) report discusses the strain this global demographic shift is placing upon current urban infrastructure. We are living in a world with a rapidly growing population and an urbanization rate that is increasing year over year. According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), people living in urban areas will increase from 50% worldwide in 2011 to 75% in 2050. Over 2.5 billion people will move to urban areas in the...
Sensor Sensibility: Sensors Transform the Information Ecosystem
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Sensor Sensibility. This column will focus on a number of topics related to sensors ranging from sensor platforms to sensor data, standards to architectures. Sensors are transforming the information ecosystem, providing an opportunity for real-time data acquisition of ambient conditions. Historically, geographic information systems have provided the view into the “real world” – from land base data like roads and rivers, to aerial photography or remotely sense...
Informing Design
Geographic information systems (GIS) technology and design have long been intertwined, hard to separate, and competitive. Born from landscape architecture, GIS was seen as the place for mapping, planning, and analysis, while computer-aided design (CAD) was seen as a design tool for engineering and architecture. Those boundaries, ill-defined and arbitrary to begin with, are beginning to blur further with the introduction of geodesign. What is Geodesign? Geodesign is a combination of geograph...
Transgranular Perspiration is Not Sandy Sweat: New Discoveries in Ceramic Tiles at smartgeometry 2012
Since the early 2000s, the smartgeometry conferences have been held in venues as august and varied as San Francisco, London, Barcelona, and Copenhagen. At first glance, Troy, New York—this year's location—seems a little out of place in that lineup, but in fact smartgeometry 2012 was another spectacular event and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) proved to be the best possible host for this annual gathering of VSPs (Very Smart People) who are finding new ways to apply computational design to...
Video: New Roundabout Under Construction at McIver and Old Florence Roads in Darlington County
Promenade at The Point
June Issue 2026
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