The Bridge to Smart Technology

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The new St. Anthony Falls Bridge crossing the Mississippi River in Minneapolis has a half dozen types of sensors embedded in it. Here's what they measure
David Foster

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As sophisticated as the St. Anthony Falls Bridge may seem, French sees big changes ahead. This bridge has a wired sensor network. The next generation will be wireless. That's much cheaper, making thousands of sensors affordable. Some people are even talking about applying sensors to surfaces in the form of a paint-like substance—so it works like human skin. How will thousands or millions of sensors be powered? One possible answer is harvesting the vibrations of the bridges as an energy source. "Those will be truly smart bridges," French says.

Sensor networks are at the heart of all sorts of smart infrastructure. San Francisco is rolling out a wireless network supplied by a startup called Streetline that detects when parking spaces are unoccupied. Motorists are directed to empty spaces either by displays on street signs or by maps on their smartphones. These projects just scratch the surface of the potential for sensor networks. Hewlett-Packard is rapidly developing nanoscale sensors and management software for what it calls a central nervous system for the earth. "We can build next-generation communities, either new cities or upgrades to existing cities," says Chandrakant D. Patel, a fellow at HP Labs. "We can create ecosystems that use much less energy."

The U.S. is just one part of the smart-infrastructure opportunity. Governments and companies across the world are upgrading transportation systems and electrical grids, erecting more efficient buildings, and otherwise adding intelligence to machines and structures. Abu Dhabi is spending $4 billion on infrastructure for its Masdar City, which is slated to be the world's first zero-carbon city. Instead of cars, Masdar will have driverless pods that carry people throughout the city. The government estimates that cutting-edge technologies will help it create 70,000 jobs and add more than two percentage points to Abu Dhabi's annual GDP growth.

So far, the U.S. has advanced more cautiously on the smart infrastructure front. Analysts expect the pace to pick up as states and municipalities become comfortable with the technologies and start adopting the best ideas from experiments around the country—say the traffic management system in Broward County or the wireless parking technology in San Francisco. Ultimately, the movement may evolve toward the visions put forth by technology giants: cell phones that alert drivers to nearby accidents, roads that reconfigure themselves to accommodate traffic flows, cars that drive themselves.

But those aren't the kinds of projects on the minds of people like Minnesota's Chiglo. As the federal government begins doling out billions of dollars for projects across the country, he'll have a direct hand in guiding his state along a pragmatic path. Since the St. Anthony Falls Bridge was completed, he's been put in charge of overseeing Minnesota's 10-year transportation upgrade program. The effort already has a budget of $1.8 billion, and the state is requesting another $500 million from the Obama Administration. "We're going to rebuild things for the future," he says.

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Hamm is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York and author of the Globespotting blog.