Survey, inspection, maintenance, construction and restoration have become challenging activities conducted during the process of civil infrastructure management, due to the revolutionary impact of mechatronics and information technology for their automation. The core of the proposed IRIS project relates to the development of new technologies to fully automate the use of robotized systems and sensor networks in data acquisition for survey, inspection and monitoring. The interaction between data acquisition and storage is managed by the construction of advanced models, which are the Digital Twins (DT) of the infrastructure updated in real time. For the continuous Non-destructive Evaluation (NDE) of the infrastructure, the integration of different information, the so-called data fusion process, is used to develop powerful digital models providing an exhaustive and realistic description of the examined facility during its service life even in post-disaster occurrences. Data and models provide the basis to identify and to describe defects and degradation especially in view of determining possible performance reduction in existing structures. All the acquired knowledge, opportunely managed, constitutes the input for automated or partially automated decision-making processes useful in facilities and infrastructure management.

This research project proposal is built on research outcomes formulated at the NATO Advanced Training Course SPS.MD.ATC.G5613 Modern technologies enabling safe and secure UAV operation in urban airspace, held in Morocco November 24-30, 2019 funded by the SPS Programme where Prof. Daponte, Assoc. Prof. De Vito, Prof. Dvorak,and Dr. Figuli participated as lecturers and participants, an advanced training course was organised by Dr. Bendarma as country partner director. The whole provided the foundation for the current research project proposal.

The scope of the proposed project is to develop an innovative integrated system for inspection and monitoring of essential structures (so called critical infrastructures – bridges, dams, offshore construction etc.) to ensure its security. Integrated systems will be developed to real time cooperation by digital environment reproducing degraded infrastructure and robots conducting inspection, maintenance and security actions performing novel sensing modalities. The developed model will be used as digital twins (a living model, one that can be used for numerical simulations, visualizations, or just complex data management. Inspection data gets layered onto this model and then analysed) of the facilities with the purpose of life cycle management. The digital environment will consider both surface and underwater components of the structure, including both surface inspection robots, such as drones, ground robots as well as specifically underwater inspection robots, allowing parts of the structure lying under the water level. Data-driven models using data fusion and machine-learning for life cycle assessment of infrastructure will be developed.

Existing structures need inspections in order to detect possible deterioration and to program their maintenance. Inspections could be initial inspections, routine inspections, damage inspections, in-depth inspections, fracture-critical inspections, underwater inspections and special inspections. The final goal of all of them is to extend the construction life and avoid critical failure. However, taking into account that different size, geometry, complexity of conservation, environmental conditions, etc., are present in constructions, designing automated procedures to execute these inspections is a challenging matter. IRIS aims at looking at the available data extractable by the mostly updated monitoring systems in order to develop innovative strategies usable for a large number and variety of structures and based on automatic acquisition, digital image processing and data fusion. In this area IRIS project aims to develop novel concepts for the proposed technological platforms, the sensor modalities and data analysis techniques. The development of procedures for using robots and automatic systems and their integration with standard SHM deployment will go a step beyond the current state-of-art in this specific field with relevant practical outcomes. The development of novel methodology to construct and interact with the digital twins of the studied infrastructure is found the novel idea of the proposal which aims to: i) enhance the penetration of novel structures into the market through the use of  sensing and automation for self-inspection interacting with the digital twins that follow the entire project from the beginning; ii) enlarge structural life of new and existing structures; iii) increase safety of operators with sustainable costs.

The themes introduced here are studied and starting to be applied, both nationally and internationally. Therefore, the project impact is on operators, public managers of works parks, small industries and companies operating in the sector since they can adopt several strategies for the inspection and management of the structures and infrastructure. Furthermore, it is evident the necessity to bring the proposed methodologies and technological tools on one side to an economic sustainability such as to have widespread diffusion, on the other hand to a level of robustness and resilience such as to ensure the long-term operation of the systems efficiently.

The need of integration of activities coming from different specific fields in the management of existing facilities starts to be crucial in view of increasing critical concerns related to their structural performances. Unfortunately, in EU Nations, but also around the World, we have experienced large and extended structural failures in a certain number of existing facilities and even in the cultural heritage due to rare and extreme events. However, also infrastructure, during their life cycle and under service loading conditions, have shown catastrophic failures. Consequently, suitable procedures for inspection, maintenance and reconstruction of structure and infrastructure are crucial for a sustainable management in Italy but similarly in most of the developed countries. Even though the structural safety issues have been largely addressed by the scientific community, the raising of innovative technologies in mechatronics, robotics, data management and ICT opens new perspectives in facing the classical problems in the management of existing construction environments.

Among the large varieties of possible applications in the area of structures and infrastructure, we have focused specific attention to the inspection and management of critical infrastructure, since they are crucial for National security and defense. The proposed application is challenging and may have great impact also from the point of view of the inspection operation itself, and data acquisition and management, since the very challenging operating conditions, i.e. environmental conditions, aerial and underwater inspection, due to the nature of the place to inspect.

The project will result in the proposed new integrated system for automatic inspection and security of infrastructure. Additionally, the Master’s of Science Programme in Analysis, diagnostics and monitoring of structures and infrastructures founded in 2019 in Sapienza will be proposed at the international level thanks to the NATO support, to uniquely embrace new knowledge in preventing failure in on-shore and off-shore strategic infrastructure.