Why smarter infrastructure matters

Over the past 75 years, governments have spent trillions of dollars to build civil infrastructure – from modern superhighways, to breathtaking bridges, to smart sidewalks that collect data about pedestrian traffic. But as much money is spent on maintaining these structures, the investment on maintenance is still below the needs¹, and we need to do more with the money that is invested.

Much of the world’s civil infrastructure has reached — or exceeded — their useful life span, resulting in a USD 2 trillion backlog of needed improvements in the US alone.² Ensuring the continuity of day-to-day life for citizens worldwide without disruption will soon require repairing or replacing more than a million structures globally—a critical initiative to sustain economic growth.

As of today:

• 9.1% of bridges are structurally deficient
• Poorly maintained roadways cost 6.9 billion hours in traffic delays

The price of poor infrastructure²

We have made incremental progress toward restoring our nation's infrastructure. But it hasn't been enough.

Water:

6 Billion gallons lost daily

Aviation:

18% of flights are delayed

Energy:

3,571 outages

Transit:

$90 Billion maintenance backlog

Roadways:

6.9 billion hours in traffic delays

Bridges:

9.1% are structurally deficient

There needs to be an easier way to continuously track, manage and address civil infrastructure assets. These include the network of roads, rails, bridges and tunnels. They also involve the components that make up these structures, such as cables, hangers, and decks that must endure for generations.

By digitally transforming the operating model for civil infrastructure asset management, you can move from performing maintenance on a strictly scheduled bases to understanding what needs to be done based on the condition of an asset. From there you can move to using data to predict failures and create sustainable, reliable and cost-effective roads, bridges, tunnels and other critical assets.

This buyer’s guide focuses on four key decision areas where digital intelligence is merging with engineering know-how to help operators, engineers and owners safely monitor, manage, and maintain infrastructure; foresee potential failures; and prioritize critical repairs.

Four key decisions areas as you consider a solution that helps you manage critical infrastructure:

1. Choosing a single platform for operations and maintenance
2. Understanding and monitoring structural health
3. Predicting and reacting to changing environments
4. Mobilizing field teams for productivity and safety

Because of the critical condition of so much of the world’s infrastructure, you need to make better decisions on where, when and how to apply limited resources to address issues and ultimately create sustainable, reliable and cost-effective roads, bridges, tunnels and other critical pieces of infrastructure.

IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure — a new industry solution available through the recently announced Maximo Application Suite — merges digital intelligence with engineering know-how to help operators confidently and safely monitor, manage and maintain infrastructure, predict potential failures, and prioritize critical repairs.

This guide will explore the various components of IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure, and how it can help you with your infrastructure projects.

See the top global asset-intensive industries that rely on IBM Maximo, and why it's deployed in 99 countries and all seven continents.

Read the infographic (1.3 MB)

The world’s infrastructure is made up of millions of assets that must function each day — and those assets are getting smarter and more connected. One way that is happening is through the use of IoT technologies. In fact, the number of connected IoT devices is predicted to reach 125 billion by 2030. IoT devices can help enhance infrastructure insights and decisions that are made daily.

Fueled by IoT data and the power of AI, a digital evolution is occurring that allows teams to leverage real-time operating data and AI capabilities for remote monitoring, visual inspection and digital twins to predict the performance and failure points of the very concrete and steel that comprise critical infrastructure.

But this task is more complex than you might imagine. To manage assets throughout their lifecycle, you need an enterprise asset management system (EAM) like the market-leading Maximo Manage, the enterprise asset management foundation of IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure. As a single-platform solution, Maximo Manage can help you increase productive uptime through preventative and more predictive maintenance, align management, engineering and maintenance teams, and help monitor efficiency to reduce operating costs.

Best practices for operation and maintenance platforms are driven by solutions that provide the following core requirements:

Often, civil infrastructure assets begin to fail randomly as age-degradation patterns go unnoticed and traditional time-based preventive maintenance strategies stop working. Usage data and other information can only provide part of the picture.

You need deep data-driven inspection and repairs that use structure-specific health models, material-specific defect types, and component-specific condition severity to ensure the right response, at the right time, to avoid risks and ensure safety while minimizing cost. IBM Maximo Health merges condition-based approaches with sensor data to allow IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure to give you a better understanding of the current and predicted health of the components within all of your structures, and can be extended with IBM Maximo Monitor using AI-powered anomaly detection to get deeper, real-time insights. This way, operators can make faster decisions to safely extend the life of the components and understand when replacements or repairs are truly needed. Delaying component replacement — and packaging tasks together to optimize structure closures — will save money and improve the availability of a structure, too.

Best practice approaches for structural health are driven by solutions that provide the following core requirements:

Predicting the impacts on civil infrastructure over decades is challenging. Assets are constantly moving and exposed to nonstop usage as well as ever-changing weather conditions. Because materials react differently to different stimulus over time, the condition of an asset today will not reflect the condition in a month, a year, or ten years from now. IBM Maximo Predict, one of the capabilities that make up IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure, can analyze all of your data, including visual and sensor-based data to help you better understand the risks to your assets today and in the future.

But with possibly hundreds of complex decisions to make every year, where do you start? By having a continuous source of information on usage, environment, condition, and more, and by comparing historical or third-party data, you gain a more predictive understanding of the situation. Then, you ensure findings from new data spur action, not just recording within a system.

Here’s why you should include predictive maintenance in your operating model.

Read the infographic (730 KB)

Best practices for predictive maintenance of Infrastructure include utilizing solutions that provide the following core requirements:

Throughout the 20th century, infrastructure engineers, inspectors and maintenance crews were equipped with an assortment of big, heavy tools and good old-fashioned know-how. They could fix just about any infrastructure asset. But today, infrastructure assets are larger, more complex and smarter than they were in the past.

The introduction of IoT and AI into the world of civil infrastructure — and an acceleration of skilled resources leaving industrial roles — has created a need for new tools and approaches to help the knowledge transfer from engineers and inspectors to new professionals. These new professionals are digitally savvy and hold a different set of expectations for their roles.

They want to use their mobile devices and have access to detailed knowledge from AI and predictive analytics to leverage visual inspection, remote monitoring, structural health and predictive maintenance capabilities to manage work, costs, and risks — and help them quickly and accurately resolve complicated issues. All of which is available with IBM Maximo Mobile, one of the capabilities in IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure, Plus, the use of remote monitoring data and real-time analytics allows them to intervene before small problems become unproductive, unplanned issues.

Best practices for building a new workforce include utilizing solutions that provide the following core requirements:

Reinventing how the world’s infrastructure is managed will both reduce risk and drive economic reward. It requires a complete view of assets, activities, and investments, supported by best in class solutions and a trusted partner. IBM Maximo for Civil Infrastructure provides a powerful suite of tools relied on by industry leaders around the world, to ensure they can deliver needed societal, environmental and economic benefits for years to come.

IBM collaborated with Sund & Bælt — which owns and operates some of the largest infrastructure in the world — to develop our AI-powered IoT solution designed to help prolong the lifespan of aging bridges, tunnels, highways, and railways.