Optimising Infrastructure Safety: INFINITUS and the Power of Proactive Management

When we think about infrastructure, whether it’s bridges, tunnels, dams, or urban transportation systems, the focus needs to go beyond just the construction itself. It's about ensuring the ongoing health and functionality of these assets, particularly as they age. Infrastructure around us is constantly subjected to wear and tear, environmental conditions, and the strain of constant use. As infrastructure ages, the need for effective lifecycle management becomes evident.

However, the methods we’ve relied on for decades, such as manual inspections and scheduled checks, tend to miss the subtle early signs of impact. These gaps in monitoring not only lead to costly repairs, but can also introduce safety risks and, in more severe cases, disruptions to the communities that depend on these systems.

Why Infrastructure Management Needs a Shift

Uncertainty in Safety: Issues sometimes arise suddenly, whether from shifts in geotechnical conditions, subtle structural degradation, extreme weather or rising traffic loads. Traditional, routine checks are often insufficient in predicting these changes effectively, leaving systems vulnerable to imperceptible risks.

Escalating Maintenance Costs: Infrastructure (such as bridges, tunnels, dams, etc.) requires regular maintenance to ensure its safety, performance, and longevity. Reactive maintenance often leads to inflated expenses, addressing issues only after they've reached a critical point. A proactive, predictive approach can help allocate resources before these problems escalate, making maintenance more cost-effective and reducing expenditures.

Information Overload and Analysis Paralysis: In infrastructure projects, data comes at us from all directions - environmental, design, geotechnical, etc. Consultants and engineers are left to sift through this mountain of data, trying to make sense of it and make the information more actionable. Without a clear strategy for data integration, making informed decisions can be Often, the signs are subtle, and problems can linger beneath the surface for a long time before they are detected. When problems emerge, they are usually the result of long-term strain, environmental changes, or unnoticed shifts in structural integrity.

Encardio Rite with its philosophy of Metasensing goes beyond just "sensing." It emphasises the integration of data, expertise, and technology to ensure infrastructure safety throughout its lifecycle—before, during, and after construction. INFINITUS, based on this philosophy, is a five step solution that helps asset owners, civil engineers, contractors, and consultants transition from reactive management to proactive, intelligent infrastructure management.

INFINITUS: A Five-Step Solution for Proactive Infrastructure Management

Here’s a breakdown of the five steps in the INFINITUS, and how each one helps to solve real world infrastructure challenges.

Step 1: Data Collection – Earth to Sky Monitoring

The Problem: Traditional monitoring systems often lack integration of different sources of data—whether it’s geotechnical sensors, structural health, or environmental monitoring. But infrastructure is complex, and it requires a multifaceted approach to fully understand its condition. Simply measuring one aspect like structural strain doesn’t provide a complete view of how an asset is performing over time. To truly gauge the health of an asset, data must be captured from multiple angles—subsurface, surface, and aerial views.

The Solution: In INFINITUS, the first step is data collection, where the goal is to use products, services and technologies that span from Earth to Sky. This involves using a wide range of monitoring systems such as:

• Geotechnical sensors like piezometers, in-place inclinometers that measure strain, tilt, water pressure, and more.

• Environmental and Structural health monitoring sensors

• Seismic monitoring

• Remote sensing technologies like InSAR, LiDAR, and satellite imagery to monitor large scale changes in the infrastructure.

• Surveying tools like Automatic total Stations, drones and GNSS systems to capture real time shifts or deformations on the surface.

• Dataloggers and IoT

The data collection from these technologies creates a complete data profile of the infrastructure, ensuring no changes go undetected.

Step 2: Data Integration – Making Sense of the Data

The Problem: The challenge with infrastructure monitoring lies not just in the sheer volume of data collected, but also in the fact that this data comes from a variety of sources, each with its own protocols. For example, LiDAR, GNSS, and geotechnical sensors use different formats and standards. When this data is collected separately, it becomes difficult to combine it meaningfully, creating gaps in understanding.

To illustrate this challenge, think of how your health app works on your Apple Watch. It collects data from multiple sensors, such as your heart rate, steps, sleep patterns, and more, but it doesn’t just store each piece of data in isolation. Instead, it integrates and analyses this data in a single, easy-to-understand dashboard. In the same way, infrastructure monitoring needs a central place to aggregate diverse data from multiple sensors to provide a cohesive, actionable view of asset health.

The Solution: Second step in INFINITUS solves this by integrating all the collected data for your project onto a single platform — Proqio, where you can view your data on a single dashboard. You can add your team members, who can also access the project data. Whether it's geotechnical sensors, UAVs, LiDAR, satellite data, or GNSS systems, all the data is integrated, ensuring stakeholders can view all the relevant information in one place.

Proqio also employs ML algorithms that analyse the data to give trends, correlations and provide predictive insights, making sense of the vast amounts of data collected and turning it into actionable intelligence.

Step 3: Data Understanding – Turning Raw Data into Actionable Insights

The Problem: While collecting data is essential, understanding and interpreting that data is often the hardest part. The massive amounts of data collected from various sources often lead to confusion and overwhelm. Consultants and engineers need tools that can make sense of the data quickly and accurately.

The Solution: The third step in INFINITUS is about turning raw data into meaningful insights through data visualisation and analysis. Tools like 3D models and digital twins provide near real-time, interactive representations of infrastructure health. In addition, Proqio’s GIS mapping brings geospatial data into a clear, intuitive format, allowing for better understanding of complex information.

The third step in INFINITUS is focused on turning raw data into meaningful insights through data visualisation and analysis. Tools like 3D models and digital twins provide near real-time, interactive representations of infrastructure health.

These tools enable users to interact with the data dynamically, adjusting axes, layers, and graph types for deeper insights. For example, axes swapping in graphs allows you to compare multiple parameters, such as displacement over time, revealing hidden trends or patterns.

But beyond traditional data visualisation, we also incorporate machine learning (ML) and generative AI (Gen AI). These technologies help identify patterns and trends within massive datasets that would otherwise go unnoticed. ML algorithms can analyse historical and real-time data to predict potential issues, while Gen AI can generate realistic simulations of potential infrastructure scenarios, offering further insights into the future performance and risks of assets.

Step 4: Risk Assessment – Identifying and Understanding Risks Early

The Problem: Infrastructure management involves significant uncertainty when predicting risks. Without the right system, asset owners and contractors may be unsure where to focus their attention, leading to delayed responses and increased costs.

The Solution: Predictive models can assess potential risks and determine which areas of the infrastructure are most vulnerable. The system analyses data from all sources and applies risk algorithms to assess the likelihood and impact of failures or deformations. Alerts are triggered when certain risk thresholds are reached, allowing stakeholders to address problems before they become significant.

Step 5: Continuous Monitoring – Keeping Infrastructure Under Constant Surveillance

The Problem: Infrastructure issues don’t always develop rapidly. Often, they change gradually over time, and without continuous monitoring, these slow changes can go undetected.

The Solution: The fifth step of INFINITUS is to ensure that infrastructure is under constant monitoring, not just at periodic intervals. Continuous monitoring tracks key parameters such as temperature, strain, displacement, and tilt in real-time. Just as a doctor might use regular blood tests or scans to catch hidden health issues in the body, continuous monitoring provides a constant flow of data that helps to identify issues in the infrastructure early on.

Predictive intelligence also allows the system to detect early anomalies and predict possible failures or weaknesses before they occur.

With the INFINITUS approach, infrastructure monitoring gives you a complete, 24/7 view of asset health by collecting data from subsurface, surface, and aerial sources. This comprehensive data is cross validated across various sensors and technologies, ensuring you get accurate, reliable insights. Real-time data collection makes it easy for stakeholders to make quick, informed decisions. Plus, everything comes together in one platform, giving you quick access to critical insights. With predictive intelligence and risk assessment models, potential issues are spotted early, so resources can be allocated efficiently, and maintenance can be more proactive.

Tools like 3D models, digital twins, and GIS mapping turn complex data into clear, interactive visualisations. By pulling in both historical and current data, the system helps you predict future risks, so you can take action before problems arise. With continuous surveillance, 24/7 monitoring, and customised alerts, INFINITUS keeps your infrastructure in top shape, improving decision-making, cutting costs, and preventing disruptions as they happen.

Encardio Rite, with over 58 years of experience, has successfully completed more than 1,000+ projects across 50+ countries, including India, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Bhutan, and Peru. Notable projects include the Idukki Dam in India, the One Za'abeel Towers in Dubai, the Mangdechhu Hydroelectric Project in Bhutan, and the DLC Transmission Towers Project in Pittsburgh, USA. These diverse implementations demonstrate the effectiveness of the INFINITUS approach in structural health monitoring throughout an asset's lifecycle.