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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday May 19 2015, @09:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the space-bridges dept.

To detect stresses and deformations in large structures before they cause damage and deaths, the European Space Agency is working with the UK's University of Nottingham to monitor the movements as they happen using satellite navigation sensors. The team uses highly sensitive satnav receivers that transmit real-time data to detect movements as fine as 1 cm combined with historical Earth observation satellite data. By placing sensors at key locations on the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland, they detected stressed structural members and unexpected deformations

The global market for the installation of GeoSHM on existing and currently planned long-span bridges is worth in excess of $1.5 billion. The UK market alone is estimated to be worth in excess of £200 million and growing. China is expected to be the largest market. While GeoSHM is designed mainly for monitoring bridges with a main span greater than 400 m, it also has potential for shorter bridges, such as Hammersmith Bridge and the Millennium Bridge in the UK. “Eventually, GeoSHM could be deployed for monitoring offshore wind turbines, masts, towers, dams, viaducts and high-rise buildings, for example,” said Xiaolin Meng, GeoSHM team leader.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 20 2015, @01:43AM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @01:43AM (#185272) Journal

    Real time integration of accelerators? Does that gear even exist?

    You can literally cobble together a GPS receiver chip, solar charged battery pack, and a cheap data-only cellular chip, all for under 50 bucks for the set. You don't have to even transmit ALL the movements, just the out-of-envelop movements. You can just store the rest on board for an occasional call-home data dump.

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  • (Score: 1) by redneckmother on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:08AM

    by redneckmother (3597) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:08AM (#185295)

    Interesting!
    So, is it possible for an individual (sans megabucks) to construct a device to enable ~1mm real-time tracking? I'd love to locate some property lines (with corners that are not visible to one another) without paying for a survey.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @06:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @06:26AM (#185324)

    You do realize that ordinary GPS receivers have an accuracy on the order of a few metres with WAAS, right? If you want centimetre resolution, you'll have to do more than just cobble together a few dozens of bucks worth of off-the-shelf gadgets.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday May 20 2015, @03:20PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @03:20PM (#185520)

    > Real time integration of accelerators? Does that gear even exist?

    Every smartphone on the planet?