Manini Connect: IoT for integrated building monitoring

Abstract

Constructions are conceived today following multi-risk scenarios encompassing natural and anthropic hazards, in the context of a rapid climate change. Nevertheless, currently the monitoring of local demand and/or performance on specific buildings is very poor due to the absence of a praxis towards the installation and the management of sensors, dedicated to the performance of the whole building. This makes the post-event field surveys and damage mapping extremely difficult, and retrofit intervention timespans very long, with negative reflection over the resilience of the whole built heritage. Manini Connect is an innovative patented system providing a response to this issue through integrated monitoring of precast structures. Through a set of interconnected sensors, the system monitors the static and dynamic behavior of the structures during critical events (earthquakes, strong winds, heavy rainfalls, collisions, blasts, etc.) and thermo-hygrometric parameters inside/outside the building. Moreover, it can be coupled with sensors devoted to the monitoring of the air quality inside the building, the local production of energy from renewable sources, and the consumptions in terms of electricity, water, gas, waste, etc. Taking advantage of the production of precast structures in offsite permanent plants, some sensors and utilities are easily inserted in the columns and cast within them during the production phase, whilst other typologies are collected into an external box installed on the roof throughout the building construction process. The data are received in real-time by the dedicated internal control center of Manini Prefabbricati SpA, and, after the occurrence of an exceptional event is revealed by the overcoming of predetermined thresholds of demand parameters, the system sends alerts for check. The user has himself constant access to the data through a dedicated platform accessible from PC and other devices. This allows to set predictive retrofit/maintenance works in response to anomalies or damages detected by the system, as a function of the parameters archived from the structural design of each specific building.