The future of infrastructure: Civil engineers discuss robots, origami homes, smart cities
By Lauren Lee | March 27, 2025
America’s infrastructure is at a critical crossroads.
As they design our future, civil engineers are tackling a number of issues, including aging infrastructure, climate change and increased urbanization in areas prone to extreme events like earthquakes, wildfires and flooding.
We spoke to three civil engineers in the midst of developing innovative technology to improve life for future generations.
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Sensors
At Georgia Tech, civil engineering professor Iris Tien is researching how sensors can potentially improve the performance of different kinds of infrastructure systems like power, water and transportation.
Tien is looking at how the sensors can closely monitor these systems and potentially add automated control and recovery to fix issues more rapidly.
For example, the sensors could improve the power system by automated switching. If the electrical grid detects a failure, it can isolate the outage so that it doesn’t spread to other parts of the grid.
Georgia Power Co., the state’s main utility provider, has implemented sensors across its network.
Tien said the company has actually seen evidence that the monitors reduce outage times for customers and increase the performance of the system.