Sustainable Construction: Building Sustainability with AI
How can innovation in AI enable sustainable infrastructure planning?
Earth Day is a time to celebrate the environmental movement and look at where we need to focus our efforts to protect the Earth. One area that currently needs to be more sustainable and positively impacting our environment is the building and infrastructure process. Continued innovation in AI and robotics will help enhance the quality of infrastructure planning and maintenance, as well as of new construction projects, which in turn will help us protect our planet, says Jeremy Suard, co-founder and CEO of Exodigo.
Every year on April 22 we shine a spotlight on environmental awareness and action. Earth Day is a time to celebrate the environmental movement and look at where we need to focus our efforts to protect the Earth.
One area that is currently woefully unsustainable and negatively impacting our environment, is the building and infrastructure process. From the use of heavy machinery and resulting air pollution to raw material waste and the importing of materials, the carbon footprint and environmental impact of the construction industry is enormous. According to the World Green Building Council, “the construction industry is a massive consumer of raw materials and natural resources, and it generates an estimated 39% of the world’s carbon emissions.”
We need to rethink our approach to construction projects to make them more sustainable and put the Earth first this Earth Day. Here’s a playbook on how to achieve more climate-conscious construction.
Consider All the Components of the Crisis
You’ll hear sustainability advocates pushing for climate-conscious construction focused on important components during the build: embodied carbon and low-carbon materials, recycled construction, energy-efficient buildings, resource/water considerations, etc. Unfortunately, the steps that happen before the build, like accurately mapping what lies beneath the planned build site, are all too often overlooked. When renewing or building infrastructure, proper planning that accounts for what lies underneath the surface ensures safer and more sustainable builds – it must become the first step in climate-conscious construction.
Sounds simple, right? Wrong. Conventional methods of underground exploration and mapping rely on incomplete or, even more troublesome, inaccurate data that creates tremendous environmental risks for infrastructure projects. Relying on one sensor/data type and GIS utility databases and cobbling data together to try to build a single picture, they may tell us what might/should be there but can’t reliably show what is definitely there. The resulting maps only account for roughly 85% of the underground.
Would you dive into a pool that you were 85% sure how deep it was? Would you willingly jump off that exotic waterfall if you couldn’t remember if the known hazards (rocks, a sunken ship, etc.) all of the tour books mentioned were to the left or the right? Would you drive without your contacts if it would impact your ability to read street signs? No. Well, maybe some would, but it still would never be the safest, smartest choice. So why dig before you know what is actually beneath the construction site?
The first steps to more climate-conscious builds come well before the dig. Before a site plan is rendered, a single shovel is lifted, or a construction vehicle is fueled up, construction leaders need to unearth what truly lies below the surface of a build site. It is the best way to prevent the costly, environmentally damaging and potentially catastrophic faults, leaks and accidents that occur when teams don’t have an accurate map of what lies beneath the surface.
The time has come to a stop relying on single sensors and GIS databases to indicate what should or might be underground and harness the power of AI to tell them what is actually there with better accuracy. With today’s technological advances, there should be no excuse for not knowing the locations of electric lines and natural gas pipes or even abandoned utility lines and unstable ground layers.
Use AI to Get 20:20 Vision on the Subsurface
The inability to “see” underground creates issues across countless industries. While I used construction as a prime example above, industries such as utilities, transportation and mining are also gravely impacted by not having 20:20 vision into the underground. The lack of precision in underground mapping efforts creates a dearth of environmental concerns – from leaks and explosions to the constant overuse of heavy machinery. For example, when relying on outdated technologies, mining companies are often unable to gauge the exact depth, shape and size of underground deposits, which leads to the need for a lot of drilling (and excessive, unnecessary environmental damage) before understanding the true location and size of a deposit .. and if it was even worth drilling and excavating in the first place.
See More: Five Reasons to Use Generative AI to Automate Building Designs
The underground is one of the most complicated imaging frontiers. While there have been AI breakthroughs in Image Processing and high-quality time series, no one has been able to effectively leverage AI for low-SNR signals in noisy environments. Fusing data from the most advanced sensors in electromagnetics, gravitation, light, ground penetrating radar (GDR), lidar and seismic sources, Exodigo found a new way to use AI to create a clearer picture of the underground without disturbing the earth and is the first to successfully combine all those signals into one matrix. It can rapidly map both complex urban environments and vast, undeveloped areas – protecting our planet.
From extreme weather to rising sea levels, there is no shortage of climate crises impacting the safety and sustainability of infrastructure building. Automation will not only digitize what was previously an analog process and provide full visibility into data that has been stored on paper, disparate files or in employees’ minds for decades but also create access to better surveys and accurate maps of the underground. Being able to “see” underground utilities like gas pipes, as well as the soil layers, water tables, and potential mineral deposits/carbon cavities, is creating a new, Earth-friendly era in underground exploration. AI-powered underground exploration dramatically de-risks the discovery process and ensures safer, more sustainable projects across a wide range of industries.
Happy Earth Day – may today be another step closer to an era of more sustainable building.
How are you building better environment consciousness? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Image Source: Shutterstock
MORE ON SUSTAINABILITY
- How 5G is Driving the Future of Sustainability
- The Top Sustainability Initiatives In the IT Industry in 2022
- To Sustainability and Beyond with Predictive Analytics
- How the Cloud Drives Sustainability
- World Environment Day: Top Tech Organizations Leading the Sustainability Charge
- Top Tips on Enhancing IT Efficiency & Cutting Your Energy Bills
