Structural monitoring software
Engineers at the Institut de Analyse et Contrainte de Mesurement (IMAC), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne developed a system of fibre optic sensors (SOFO) to measure local deformations in structures.
Local authorities in the Canton of Geneva decided to extend the Versoix bridge, near Geneva Airport and contacted the IMAC engineers to help them. IMAC placed a network of sensors into the newly poured concrete in order to measure how the bridge was behaving in particular how the old and new concrete would interact to the increased traffic going across the bridge. The SOFO system produced tonnes of data which took hours for the engineers to sift through and try and analyse in order to ascertain bridge behaviour.
Working as part of the engineering team, Ruth was able to:- interview engineers to ask them how they felt about the software they currently used and what they would want to see in structural monitoring software
- shadow engineers on the Versoix bridge calculating where to place the sensors, pouring concrete, capturing data from the sensors
- research and identify models in the literature to use in the new software and its model-based reasoning approach
- model engineering procedures and ways of communicating using symbols, mathematics, models, graphs and plans for use in the graphical-user interface
- program a prototype Structural Monitoring ToolKit (SMTK) in OpenGL/X-Motif
- test SMTK on several groups of engineers using questionnaires and one-on-one user interviews in order to evaluate the utility of such a system