Summer school: New horizons in Sustainable transport infrastructure engineering Palermo Italy 3/09/2018 to 07/09/2018

Bonjour

Today, I am going to share with you the experience of the summer school we attended at Palermo Italy. As you can tell from the title of this post, the topic was dedicated to sustainable techniques and approaches for the transport infrastructure. It was organized by the University of Palermo, Italy with Mondello palace hotel as the venue. The hotel was right in front of a beautiful Sicilian beach which was another reason why it was an enjoyable experience.

Day 1

The first day was dedicated to lectures on the structural health monitoring and the topics included 3D surveying techniques applied to civil infrastructures and the tools required to measure the distress in the infrastructure. There were also interesting lectures on monitoring vibrations with different tools and technologies by celebrated speakers, which included:

3D surveying techniques applied to Civil

Infrastructures

Fabio Remondino, FBK

How to Monitor Vibrations: Traditional tools

Alberto Di Matteo, UNIPA

How to Monitor Vibrations: Advanced tools

Chiara Masnata, UNIPA

UAV: Geomatics applications with infrared

thermography

Antonino Maltese, UNIPA

UAV photogrammetry for pavement distress

analysis: application and processing

Alessandro Scordo, UNIPA

Laura Inzerillo, UNIPA

Day 2

The second day we had lectures on the topic of sustainable technology and recycled materials used for pavements and introduction about the Life cycle assessment (LCA) in road pavements. These lectures provided us an insight on the aspects of sustainability in our respective projects and what we could do to assess the factors affecting sustainability. The LCA tools were also introduced in these lectures to give us an opportunity to quantify more precisely the sustainability of a project. The speakers included:

Recycling in asphalt pavements:

laboratory design and plant manufacturing

Orazio Baglieri, POLITO

Gaetano Di Mino, UNIPA

Recycling in asphalt pavements:

circular models

Gaetano Di Mino, UNIPA

Sustainability Assessment & EcoDesign

Davide Lo Presti, UNOTT

LCA and road pavements

Davide Lo Presti, UNOTT

Oumaya Marzouk, CEREMA

Day 3

The next day we had more detailed lectures on life cycle assessment using the open source tool named OPENLCA and another LCA tool called ECORCE that is used to quantify the different parameters affecting sustainability. We trained to use these tools ourselves to better understand the parameters and the working interface of the software. There was also a lecture by Prof John Harvey on the links between sustainability and asset management, explaining the importance of sustainable projects.

LCA software for ecodesign:

OpenLCA

Andreas Ciroth, Greendelta

ECORCE M

Agnes Jullien, IFSTTAR

LCA software: case studies from France

Chantal Proust, Polytech Orléans

Sustainability and asset management: studies from

USA and UK

John Harvey, UCDAVIS

Tony Parry, UNOTT

Sustainability and asset management: studies from

USA and UK

John Harvey, UCDAVIS

Tony Parry, UNOTT

Day 4

The fourth day started off with different case studies of projects and principles governing sustainability in those projects. This was followed by more interactive lectures on how to incorporate the sustainability concept in education and research. Different activities were carried out to come up with specific proposals to create more awareness of sustainability in our education system starting from primary education.

Social LCA: Principles and case studies

Andreas Ciroth, Greendelta

introducing sustainability in Education: Lectures

John Harvey, UCDAVIS /Agnes Jullien, IFSTTAR

Introducing sustainability in Education:

Workshop with fellows and scientists

John Harvey, UCDAVIS

Agnes Jullien, IFSTTAR

Day 5

The final day began with a lecture on the definitions of communication by Francesca Rizzuto, UNIPA. The rest of the afternoon we had an open session where all the SMARTI fellows had to present their work in 5 minutes to all the researchers and supervisors invited. Finally, to wrap up this summer school we had a gala dinner by the beautiful Sicilian beach.

So this was it for the post! I have provided the names of the presenters and their respective topics if any of you is working on the same topic and is looking for some help in the same field.

CIAO CIAO

Structural Health monitoring workshop/ Manchester: 7-9 July 2018

Bonjour

Previously I gave a brief introduction about my project and goals, and as a huge part of my work involves instrumentation and monitoring, I took this opportunity to attend a workshop on structural health monitoring in Manchester, United Kingdom. As I mentioned earlier, my work involves pavement structures and its instrumentation and usually, I find myself dealing with a lot of sensors and transducers for monitoring purposes. So this workshop, not just concentrated on the different aspects of the structural health monitoring but also on analyzing the data received from it. The interesting part of this workshop was that it integrated different fields like civil engineering, electronics, electrical, digital communication and statistics. More specifically we get to learn how various aspects of technology and science that are used for structural monitoring on a larger scale and how each field has its own significances and contribution.

The part that I found interesting and related to my work was the SHM sensing technologies in which they explained in detail the state of the art sensing technologies used for different applications and their physical or electronic properties which are important to observe in order to extract the required information. Along with that, other topics included were the data acquisition systems, digital signal processing for treating the data and the statistics to quantify and conclude the results obtained from this monitoring system. This again is just one perspective on this topic. There was also a discussion on how this could be extended to incorporate machine learning and big data aspects of it.

From this short course, we got a better understanding of how vast this field is and the future of structural health monitoring. So that was the brief overview of the workshop, I will link down the information about the instructors and the book regarding this specific topic. So, this is it for this post until next time ciao ciao!!

The instructors:
Dr. Charles Farrar, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Dr. Eric Flynn, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Professor Michael Todd, University of California – San Diego

The book:

Structural Health Monitoring: A Machine Learning Perspective 1st Edition

https://www.amazon.com/Structural-Health-Monitoring-Learning-Perspective/dp/1119994330

Smarti Trainings

Hello folks

So here I am again with my SMARTI experience to share. Being part of the European training network and a Marie Curie fellow we have to attend different trainings at different partner universities and organizations. This is not just a great learning experience but also a great chance for networking.
Our first training was held at the University of Nottingham, which was an introductory week, and we were introduced to the rest of the fellows, supervisors and the project partners. Unfortunately, I could not attend the first two days of the training week as my visa arrived late. So, folks if you need a visa, apply at least 3 months prior despite where you are traveling to. The remaining three days of the training included lectures on the topics of presentation skills, planning your research and skills related to becoming an engaging researcher. We also had a robin hood tour of the city which was amazing until it started to rain.  

Here are some of the pictures from the first training week:

The second training week was also in Nottingham and this time the topic was communication skills and digital marketing techniques. The lectures included were about the digital tools needed for research, writing a research paper, presentation skills and how to effectively communicate your research to a wider audience. Also the importance of using social media platforms to disseminate your work. For this, we were advised to create our own blogs and use social media for our professional work as well.
Another good aspect of these training is that we got to share our experiences and work with other fellows and bond as a group rather than individuals and I must say within these two trainings we have become a stronger and cohesive group, offering each other mutual support and respect.

Here are some of the pictures from our second training week:

Our next training week/summer school is scheduled at the University of Palermo, Italy in September and I am super excited for that, I mean just look at the beaches :D can you blame me :D

But hopefully, it would be as informative and helpful as the other two. So that is it for today I will get back with some other topic and experience to share until than Ciao 😊.

About SMARTI ETN and ESR15

Hello everyone

Before I dig into the details of my project and the whole purpose of creating this blog, I am sure you must be curious about the person behind this blog. So, my name is Natasha Baloch I am from Pakistan and I have done my bachelors and masters from Mehran University of Engineering and Technology. During my masters, I was awarded Erasmus Mundus scholarship at Politecnico di Milano where I carried out my research and did my thesis, which I feel was the changing point of my career ( maybe I could write a separate post for it 😏 ). My research fields include wireless sensor networks, vehicular communication, and intelligent transport systems. Currently, I am part of SMARTI ETN as an Early stage Researcher and working on my Ph.D. at IFSTTAR in pavement instrumentation and monitoring.

So why is my work important? I will not be exaggerating if I say that bad pavements conditions, road closures and traffic jams all of that infuriate us, we all face these day-to-day inconveniences which affects our daily life. Let us admit that we have been the victim of hitting that snooze button on our alarms only to realize that we are not just late but also stuck in traffic.

Imagine that, the daily debate we have with ourselves that if I had woken up 10 minutes earlier I would have made it on time. In fact, I too, am one of those people who hit the snooze button and regrets it later so this struggle is quite real.

Getting back to the point, these bad pavements and traditional inspection and maintenance methods not only create traffic congestion and have a social influence on our lives but also have an environmental impact. Research has shown that air pollution has increased up to 20 percent due to traffic congestion. This all is preventable by having a smart and remote monitoring system for road pavements.  

At the French institution of science and technology for transport, development, and networks (IFSTTAR), we are working together on this application of having a more smart infrastructure for the pavements. This project is divided into two main parts; 
1) instrumentation 2) wireless data acquisition system.

 The idea is to instrument different kinds of sensors and transducers in the pavements that could measure the factors effecting the pavements accurately. In addition, having that data collected remotely to be treated so it is readily available and understandable to the road managers and owners. The holistic idea is that this system would help measure the fatigue and predict the lifespan of the roads and pavements. Most importantly doing this by having less traffic congestion and minimal environmental effect. 
This is the short summary of my work and I tried my best to make it as comprehendible and less technical as possible. If you need any further information about the project you can always contact me. 
So folks thank you for taking out your precious time and making it to the end of this post. This is it for today but I will keep you posted about the adventures of an MSCA fellow! After all, this is the whole purpose of creating this blog and so we are on this journey together. 😃😃

au revoir
A très bientôt (see you soon) 😄