Engineers from CrossRail, Laing O’Rourke, and ATC were among key speakers at CSIC’s Workshop on AutoID for Smart Assets and Cities which discussed the challenges of tackling asset identification.
Experts from the Cambridge University AutoID Labs and FlyingBinary put these challenges into perspective with reports of progress in other industries and the upcoming PAS182 Smart Cities standard. Sky High Technology, Cambridge Consultants and Redbite Solutions gave live, hands-on demonstrations of systems to identify objects, giving them a personality and tracking their location: David Aarons explained how Enlight’s energy efficient lighting systems can be used to form the backbone infrastructure of a smart city; DropTag used their Bluetooth sensor tags to monitor the real-time behaviour of scaletrix cars and the track they are travelling on; SkyHigh showed the live feed from a detailed traffic survey outside the building, and Redbite showcased their cloud based asset tagging and tracking systems.
The Workshop discussed how civil assets are being ‘smartened up’ by industry leaders, technology providers and policy makers and examined the layers of innovative technology used to automatically identify (AutoID) objects and people to streamline construction and asset management processes, creating the building blocks of a Smart City.
Key industry players revealed how they are working to revolutionise their approach to construction and asset management, using AutoID technologies to keep track of components and people, and demonstrations of state-of-the-art equipment illustrated how off-the-shelf technology can be used or adapted for construction and fed into Smart Cities initiatives.
Jennifer Schooling, Director of CSIC said: “Our Workshop was well attended and highlighted the part buildings and infrastructure play in creating ‘smart’ cities, the challenges facing asset owners and the benefits to be gleaned from AutoID systems.”