Infrastructure monitoring is concerned with the monitoring of infrastructures such as bridges, railway tracks, or (offshore) windmills. The primary goal is to detect any events or changes of the structural conditions that can impact the risk and safety of the infrastructure being monitored. Another important aspect that is addressed with infrastructure monitoring is to schedule repair and maintenance activities in a cost-effective manner.
The infrastructure to monitor could be in a single building (e.g. a factory) or spread over a wider area and difficult to access .
In case a network is widely spread across a vast geographical area, the wireless devices might use diverse long-distance wireless technologies such as WiMAX or 3G/LTE. In cases, where an in-building network is involved, the network can be based on Ethernet or wireless technologies suitable for in-building use.
The management of infrastructure monitoring applications is primarily concerned with the monitoring of the functioning of the system. Infrastructure itself does not change often. However, monitoring devices are often deployed in unsupervised environments; hence, special attention must be given to protecting the devices from being modified.
Certain events (e.g., natural disasters) may require that status information be obtained quickly and that replacements of failed sensors can be rolled out quickly (or redundant sensors are activated quickly). In case the devices are difficult to access, a self healing feature on the device might become necessary.
Industrial Applications for Industry 4.0 Industrial Applications and smart manufacturing refer to tasks such as
For the management of a factory, it is essential to implement smart capabilities to enable rapid manufacturing of new products, dynamic response to product demands, and real-time optimization of manufacturing production and supply-chain networks.
Energy management is especially relevant to the Smart Grid. A Smart Grid is an electrical grid that uses data networks to gather and act on energy and power-related information in an automated fashion with the goal to improve the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of the production and distribution of electricity
Smart devices act as enablers for advanced and possibly remote health-monitoring and emergency notification systems, ranging from monitors for blood pressure and heart rate to advanced devices capable of monitoring implanted technologies, such as pacemakers or advanced hearing aids. Medical sensors may not only be attached to human bodies, they might also exist in the infrastructure used by people such as bathrooms or kitchens. Medical applications will also be used to ensure treatments are being applied properly, and they will guide people losing orientation. Fitness and wellness applications, such as connected weighing machines or wearable heart monitors, encourage consumers to exercise and empower self-monitoring of key fitness indicators.
Different applications use Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or ZigBee connections to access the patient’s smartphone or home cellular connection to access the Internet.
Building automation comprises the distributed systems designed and deployed to monitor and control the mechanical, electrical, and electronic systems inside buildings.Advanced Building Automation Systems (BASs) can be deployed concentrating the various functions of safety, environmental control, occupancy, and security. Increasingly, the deployment of the various functional systems is connected to the same communication infrastructure (possibly IP-based), which may involve wired or wireless communication networks inside the building.
Examples of functions performed by controllers in building automation are regulating the quality, humidity, and temperature of the air inside the building as well as regulating the lighting. Other systems may report the status of the machinery inside the building like elevators or inside the rooms like projectors in meeting rooms.
Security cameras and sensors can be deployed and operated on separate dedicated infrastructures connected to the common backbone.The deployment area of a BAS is typically inside one building (or part of it) or several buildings geographically grouped in a campus. A building network can be composed of network segments, where a network segment covers a floor, an area on the floor, or a given functionality (e.g., security cameras).
Home automation includes the control of lighting, heating,ventilation, air conditioning, appliances, entertainment and home security devices to improve convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and safety. It can be seen as a residential extension of building automation.
Transport application" is a generic term for the integrated application of communications, control and information processing in a transportation system. "Transport telematics" and "vehicle telematics" are both used as terms for the group of technologies that support transportation systems. Transport applications running on such a transportation system cover all modes of the transport and consider all elements of the transportation system, i.e. the vehicle,the infrastructure, and the driver or user, interacting together dynamically.
Examples for transport applications are inter- and intra-vehicular communication, smart traffic control, smart parking, electronic toll-collection systems, logistic and fleet management, vehicle control, and safety and roadside assistance.
