Globally, national infrastructure is facing significant challenges: - Ageing assets: Much of the UK's existing infrastructure is old and no longer fit for purpose. In its State of the Nation Infrastructure 2014 report the Institution of Civil Engineers stated that none of the sectors analysed were "fit for the future" and only one sector was "adequate for now". The need to future-proof existing and new infrastructure is of paramount importance and has become a constant theme in industry documents, seminars, workshops and discussions. - Increased loading: Existing infrastructure is challenged by the need to increase load and usage - be that number of passengers carried, numbers of vehicles or volume of water used - and the requirement to maintain the existing infrastructure while operating at current capacity. - Changing climate: projections for increasing numbers and severity of extreme weather events mean that our infrastructure will need to be more resilient in the future. These challenges require innovation to address them. However, in the infrastructure and construction industries tight operating margins, industry segmentation and strong emphasis on safety and reliability create barriers to introducing innovation into industry practice. CSIC is an Innovation and Knowledge Centre funded by EPSRC and Innovate UK to help address this market failure, by translating world leading research into industry implementation, working with more than 40 industry partners to develop, trial, provide and deliver high-quality, low cost, accurate sensor technologies and predictive tools which enable new ways of monitoring how infrastructure behaves during construction and asset operation, providing a whole-life approach to achieving sustainability in an integrated way. It provides training and access for industry to source, develop and deliver these new approaches to stimulate business and encourage economic growth, improving the management of the nation's infrastructure and construction industry. Our collaborative approach, bringing together leaders from industry and academia, accelerates the commercial development of emerging technologies, and promotes knowledge transfer and industry implementation to shape the future of infrastructure. Phase 2 funding will enable CSIC to address specific challenges remaining to implementation of smart infrastructure solutions. Over the next five years, to overcome these barriers and create a self-sustaining market in smart infrastructure, CSIC along with an expanded group of industry and academic partners will: - Create the complete, innovative solutions that the sector needs by integrating the components of smart infrastructure into systems approaches, bringing together sensor data and asset management decisions to improve whole life management of assets and city scale infrastructure planning; spin-in technology where necessary, to allow demonstration of smart technology in an integrated manner. - Continue to build industry confidence by working closely with partners to demonstrate and deploy new smart infrastructure solutions on live infrastructure projects. Develop projects on behalf of industry using seed-funds to fund hardware and consumables, and demonstrate capability. - Generate a compelling business case for smart infrastructure solutions together with asset owners and government organisations based on combining smarter information with whole life value models for infrastructure assets. Focus on value-driven messaging around the whole system business case for why smart infrastructure is the future, and will strive to turn today's intangibles into business drivers for the future. - Facilitate the development and expansion of the supply chain through extending our network of partners in new areas, knowledge transfer, smart infrastructure standards and influencing policy.

Infrastructure is a large part of the UK's assets. Efficient management and maintenance of infrastructure are vital to the economy and society. The application of emerging technologies to advanced health monitoring of existing critical infrastructure assets will quantify and define the extent of ageing and the consequent remaining design life of infrastructure, thereby reducing the risk of failure. Emerging technologies will also transform the industry through a whole-life approach to achieving sustainability in construction and infrastructure in an integrated way - design and commissioning, the construction process, exploitation and use, and eventual de-commissioning. Crucial elements of these emerging technologies will be the application of the latest sensor technologies, data management tools and manufacturing processes to the construction industry, both during infrastructure construction and throughout its design life. There will be a very substantial market for exploitation of these technologies by the construction industry, particularly contractors, specialist instrumentation companies and owners of infrastructure.In this proposal, we seek to create the Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction that will bring together four leading research groups in the Cambridge Engineering Department and the Computer Laboratory (sensors, computing, manufacturing engineering and civil engineering), along with staff in other faculties - the Judge Business School and the Department of Architecture. The Centre will develop and commercialise emerging technologies which will provide radical changes in the construction and management of infrastructure, leading to considerably enhanced efficiencies, economies and adaptability. We propose to create 'Smart Infrastructure' with the following attributes: (a) minimal disturbance and maximum efficiency during construction, (b) minimal maintenance for new infrastructure and optimum management of existing infrastructure, (c) minimal failures even during extreme events (fire, natural hazards, climate change), and (d) minimal waste materials at the end of the life cycle. The IKC will focus on the innovative use of emerging technologies in sensor and data management (e.g. fibre optics, MEMS, computer vision, power harvesting, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and Wireless Sensor Networks). These will be coupled with emerging best practice in the form of the latest manufacturing and supply chain management approaches applied to construction and infrastructure (e.g. smart building components for life-cycle adaptive design, innovative manufacturing processes, integrated supply chain management, and smart management processes from building to city scales). It will aim to develop completely new markets and achieve breakthroughs in performance.The business opportunities in construction and infrastructure are very considerable, not only for construction companies but also for other industries such as IT, electronics and materials. The IKC is designed to respond directly and systematically to the input received from industry partners on what is required to address this issue. Through the close involvement of industry in technical development as well as in demonstrations in real construction projects, the commercialisation activities of emerging technologies will be progressed during the project to a point where they can be licensed to industry. The outputs of the IKC will provide the construction industry, infrastructure owners and operators with the means to ensure that very challenging new performance targets can be met. Furthermore the potential breakthroughs will make the industry more efficient and hence more profitable. They will also give UK companies a competitive advantage in the increasingly global construction market.