Editorial for Special Issue

Abstract

A “structure” is here understood to include anything constructed by man—underground space, buildings, transmission towers, pipelines, distribution grids, economic systems, air frames, measuring, data acquisition and manipulation systems, etc. The design and control of these infrastructure elements can all fit within the purview of Civil Engineering. They all affect the public wellbeing; they all involve aspects of what traditionalists define as civil engineering. Some elements demand expansion of expectations and imagination, but provide the profession with new opportunities in growing application spaces, provide powerful tools, more interesting and cutting edge problems to solve. This growth could also attract the attention of many students who currently choose other fields of engineering, science, public policy, business, and economics, and minimize reliance on other disciplines. The civil engineering profession has much to offer society, and everyone would benefit by our addressing more of the world. An example of the empowerment of civil engineers through integration of new technologies is enlightening. Integrated health monitoring of structures, made possible by advances in sensor technology, is improving structural reliability, longevity, system performance, and safety against natural hazards and intentional attack. Current technology is moving beyond the embryonic stage and is becoming able to meet the challenges associated with structural health interpretation. Perhaps the most important enabling technology for structural health monitoring has been the introduction of comprehensive miniature sensing platforms that colocate transduction sensing or actuation , signal processing, computational power, and wireless communication all in one miniaturized package. Such wireless sensors are commonly called motes, or “smart” sensors. In turn, motes are combined into large, organic networks that allow dense, detailed sensing, thereby opening a new sensing paradigm in which the network is effectively the sensor. The paradigm of sensor networking allows engineers and scientists to move beyond the idea of a sensor as a single instrument that only measures one thing, to a comprehensive system consisting of many small nodes working cooperatively. Motes are now ubiquitous enough that several companies, large and small, are selling them commercially. Today, civil engineers are in a good position to refine existing measurement archetypes by utilizing emerging sensor design archetypes; in particular, transducers and micro-circuitry made possible by micro electro-mechanical systems MEMS technology. MEMS are micron-scale mechanical devices that are “machined” out of silicon using the same processes commonly used to fabricate integrated circuits. These are often the same mechanical subassemblies that are part of their traditional macro-scale counterpart. Another attractive feature of MEMS is the ability to seamlessly integrate electrical and electro-mechanical components