Irmos Technologies AG

Our mission is to bridge the gap between research and practice for more resilient, safe and sustainable infrastructure.

The problem

Over 50% of buildings and bridges in Europe have exceeded their design life span. Replacing all the obsolete infrastructures would be financially unbearable and environmentally disastrous as almost 40% of the global CO2 emissions are attributed to the construction industry.

We need a way to know which ‘expired’ infrastructure is structurally sound and which needs to be retrofitted. Medical doctors need to measure the vital signals of a patient to formulate a firm diagnosis. Similarly, maintenance planners need internal information of the structural condition, to provide reliable assessments and cost-efficient maintenance solutions. Hence, we need reliable tools to monitor the structural condition to maximise the safe life of infrastructure and determine necessary renovations.

Today, monitoring relies on visual inspections that are subjective, time consuming and inconclusive as they only evaluate the visible and accessible parts of structures.

This often leads to one of these problematic outcomes:

We do not properly retrofit buildings and bridges that are at risk, which can lead to the dire consequences seen in Genoa in 2018.

We replace buildings and bridges that are structurally sound and could stand much longer despite reaching their “expiration date”. It is financially costly and has a negative environmental impact.

Our solution: reliable monitoring of the structural condition of building and bridges

Building on 10 years of research at the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring at ETH and the PhD research of Dr. Panagiotis Martakis, we develop a solution that enables monitoring the global structural integrity, independent from the construction material and without prior knowledge about the type and location of damage. We measure vibrations with a limited number of low-cost sensors that we developed and that are attached to the monitored structure. Powered by cutting-edge AI tools, our intelligent monitoring platform translates vibrations of buildings and bridges due to wind or traffic into structural condition metrics. These metrics enable maintenance planners to better assess the structure and define the most efficient renovation measures.

Owners of large infrastructure portfolios benefit from our solution through maximising the operational life of their assets and reducing downtimes. Furthermore, we will minimize the environmental footprint of structures and improve their safety and resilience for society.