Category Archives: Civil/Transportation

Technology That Tracks

A singular railway system provides a linear path from construction to maintenance on the Tren Maya. Mexico’s Tren Maya (Maya Train) has been lauded as “the most important public work in the world” by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Designed to boost economic and social development in the country’s southeast––a decades-long underdeveloped region––the 1,500-kilometer...

Measuring Change at Scale: FARO’s Mass-Data Vision for Digital Reality

At INTERGEO 2025 in Frankfurt, FARO®, a business of AMETEK®, Inc. wasn’t just celebrating a milestone, it was making a case for how 20 years of terrestrial laser scanning experience feeds directly into the next wave of GIS: mass data, AI-ready point clouds and digital twins that help societies manage infrastructure at scale. “All of...

The Next Big Thing

A string of high-profile bridge failures in recent years has underscored the importance of innovating the way we inspect and assess the condition of our vital civil infrastructure. Can the use of AI help prevent bridge collapses in the future? This award-winning engineer thinks so. The period spanning 1992 to 2014 could just be the...

Rapidly Mapping Infrastructure

Could a Pittsburgh-based start-up help improve (and save) America’s bridges? Early in the morning of January 28, 2022, a Pittsburgh Regional Transit Authority bus crossing the Fern Hollow Bridge began bouncing and shaking for no apparent reason. Moments later it plummeted into a ravine along with several other vehicles as the bridge collapsed beneath them....

Sustainable Rainwater Treatment for the Future

How machine-control solutions are increasing efficiencies on ground-breaking projects by up to 60 percent The seaside town of Køge lies just forty minutes south of Copenhagen in Denmark. A rapidly expanding area, new housing projects and transport infrastructure are an immediate priority for residents and local authorities.But, for a town located just three meters above...

The Construction Automation Continuum

It’s more about many minor triumphs than major leaps. Surveyors can play an essential role in implementing these changes To those outside of the industry (and some within), the term “construction automation” evokes visions of bots and autonomous equipment plying construction sites—efficient and tireless—yet always on some far horizon. In present reality, construction automation takes...