Many infrastructure assets are designed for a service life of 100 years, even with deterioration due to material degradation, extreme temperature, and external loads. But deterioration can accelerate because of poor design or workmanship, construction problems, unforeseen stressors, and inadequate maintenance and repair. Ideally, infrastructure should be designed to both meet immediate needs and be adaptable to future demands throughout its lifetime. Past design philosophy, however, was based on current demand prediction, creating a substantial risk that the infrastructure will be inadequate or obsolete before the end of its expected period of operation. In addition, the covid-19 pandemic changed infrastructure demands as teleworking continues to transform residential and travel patterns. Adopting new mobility platforms and increasing automation and electrification will affect future infrastructure.
Adaptation is no longer a choice but a requirement for sustainable living. Infrastructure must adapt to changes and threats that are here now. The need to improve the capability to predict, design for, and manage the life expectancy of infrastructure calls for smart infrastructure engineering with the sustainability, resilience, and equity of communities at its center. How can the built environment be rehabilitated or created so that future generations benefit from smart infrastructure? The talk will discuss the opportunities of emerging technologies to address these questions and the role of the new Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure can make to transform the way we design, build, maintain and reuse our infrastructure.
Lecture date: Friday November 3, 9:00-10:00AM PST
(Webinar Recording Passcode: Hz0.i%?S)
Presenter
Kenichi Soga
Chancellor’s Professor, University of California at Berkeley
Director, Center for Smart Infrastructure
Kenichi Soga is the Donald H. McLaughlin Professor in Mineral Engineering and a Chancellor’s Professor at UC Berkeley. Soga is also the Director of the Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure, a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and serves as a Special Advisor to the Dean of the College of Engineering for Resilient and Sustainable Systems. Soga’s research focuses on infrastructure sensing, performance-based design and maintenance of infrastructure, energy geotechnics, and geomechanics. He has published more than 450 journal and conference papers. He is also a member of several professional organizations, including the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow for the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the Engineering Academy of Japan. He is the recipient of several notable awards, including the George Stephenson Medal and Telford Gold Medal from ICE in 2006, the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from ASCE in 2007, and the UCB Bakar Prize for his work on commercialization of smart infrastructure technologies in 2022.
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