CSIC’s mission to transform the future of infrastructure and support the UK to become a world leader in the fields of sensing technologies, asset management and smart city development is assured following the announcement of a further five years funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Innovate UK.
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The additional funding will allow CSIC to build on its significant achievements over the past five years to become a widely-recognised hub for the infrastructure and construction industry, bringing together leading academics and industrialists, developing a faster route for innovation adoption, providing an ecosystem for building confidence in new innovations and enabling their timely implementation and exploitation.
Jennifer Schooling, Director of CSIC, said: “CSIC will continue to engage with business leaders and decision makers in key markets to ensure that our work continues to meet industry needs, and that industry leaders are well informed of the value that ‘smart’ innovations in infrastructure and construction can bring to their business.
“CSIC’s ability to deliver value is unrivalled. Our outputs present real opportunities to make major improvements in how we create new infrastructure.”
There has already been substantial impact of CSIC’s activities in terms of the wide variety of tools and technologies - including fibre optic strain measurement, UtterBerry ultra-low power wireless sensor motes, vibration energy harvesting devices and CSattAR photogrammetric monitoring system - recently deployed on some of the largest civil engineering projects including Crossrail, National Grid, London Underground, CERN and the Staffordshire Alliance.
The application of CSIC’s capability and knowledge is now being broadened to new markets including water infrastructure, highways and power.
“Securing this funding for the next five years offers a wide range of opportunities to take CSIC’s work forward and embed a culture of innovation adoption in the infrastructure and construction industries,” said Jennifer Schooling. “CSIC cannot achieve this alone – working with industry is the key to our success to date and we always welcome approaches from Industry Partners seeking to collaborate.”
Professor Philip Nelson, CEO, EPSRC, said: “The Centre will continue its leading role within the UK by increasing the lifetime of ageing infrastructure, making it more resilient, and making construction processes more efficient by using smart sensing technology. This collaborative research between academia and industry will increase the UK’s competitiveness, lead to savings quantified in millions of pounds and provide technology that can be exported for UK based companies.”
Kevin Baughan, Director of Technology and Innovation at Innovate UK said: “The work of CSIC has helped to demonstrate the value of smart infrastructure to the construction industry, and this is reflected in the recognition of innovation at the heart of the future plans of the construction leadership council. By extending funding for a further five years, we underline our support for their commitment to raise the commercialisation bar even higher. This will help companies of all sizes grow through leveraging the excellent UK science base in smart infrastructure.”