Types of infrastructures

 

Transport infrastructures

Roads, railways, airports, seaports and waterways. They facilitate the movement of goods and people.

  • Improvement of structural behaviour to withstand earthquakes and fires by applying stainless steel.
  • Reduction of creep and fatigue of structural elements in marine and/or coastal environments through concrete reinforced with polymer fibres.
  • Extension of the lifespan of asphalt using new tools to measure the ductility of bituminous binders.
  • Reduction of noise pollution and vibrations caused by railway infrastructures.
  • Reduction of economic and environmental impact through tools to improve maintenance and renewal efficiency.
  • Reduction of risk and increase in coastal areas’ resilience to extreme hydrometeorological events.
  • Integration and evaluation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the Value Model for Sustainability in bridge construction.

 

ICT infrastructures

Telecommunications networks: fibre optic cables, wireless networks, satellites, antennas and communication towers. They enable the transmission of information and data. This includes servers, data centres, network cables, computer equipment and information technologies.

  • Monitoring of the cyber-physical security of critical infrastructures.
  • Network planning.
  • Antennas and communication infrastructures.
  • Data collection systems (IoT).
  • 5G, 6G and LoRa Mesh.

 

Energy infrastructures

Power generation plants, distribution networks, hydroelectric power stations, wind farms, solar plants and others.

  • Improvement of the performance and reliability of floating offshore wind technology.
  • Optimisation of hydraulic infrastructures by increasing efficiency and reducing costs.
  • Reduction of the impact of soil degradation on infrastructures.
  • Rehabilitation and maintenance of hydraulic works and tools for comprehensive management and evaluation against expansive phenomena.
  • New durable materials and sustainable methodologies for the repair of hydraulic infrastructures.

 

Social infrastructures

Schools, hospitals, health centres, cultural spaces and social housing, among others.

  • Improvement of indoor air quality.
  • Comfort and energy use in buildings and public spaces.
  • Improvement of building safety against wind and earthquakes.
  • Acoustic sensors to generate automatic noise maps.

 

Industrial infrastructures

Includes factories, industrial zones, business parks and all facilities necessary for the production and manufacture of goods.

  • Assessment of the resistance of structural elements subjected to cyclic forces.
  • Functionality, safety, and durability of structures under static, seismic loads and environmental actions.
  • Automated warehouses.
  • Intelligent manufacturing.

Sustainability

 

Materials

  • New steel-concrete connection systems in mixed structures to improve load and fire resistance.
  • Bio-based materials. Recycling of agricultural waste through the use of vegetable fibres as reinforcement in advanced construction materials.
  • Agricultural waste for the design of high-efficiency insulation SATE panels.
  • Neuromorphic and nociceptive materials for infrastructure sensorisation.
  • Deformable piezoelectric materials applied to energy generation.
  • High-durability concrete structures incorporating flexible thermoplastic reinforcement.
  • Porous materials for sustainable drainage and water recovery.

 

Circularity

  • Recycled textile materials for multifunctional panels for ventilated façades, floating floors and roofing slabs, and as reinforcement for masonry and ceramic structures.
  • New bituminous binders from tanker waste.
  • New cementitious materials from the fine fraction of construction waste.

 

Life cycle

  • Planning, design, construction, service life and operation, maintenance and dismantling and recycling, considering economic, social, environmental, quality, and health and safety aspects.
  • Remote monitoring and solutions for the effects of climate change on infrastructures (mass loss, accelerated ageing, fatigue, cracking, etc.).
  • Life cycle assessment of large infrastructures on economic, social, environmental, quality and health and safety aspects relating to people, with a holistic perspective.

 

Rehabilitation

  • New techniques for strengthening and rehabilitating urban heritage structures using lightweight materials.
  • Identifying mechanisms to reverse degradation trends and reuse obsolete building stock as affordable housing.
  • Minimal and reversible interventions on heritage sites.
  • Decision support in the temporal planning of rehabilitation actions to improve building energy efficiency.
  • Energy rehabilitation by reusing obsolete closing systems to mitigate the heat island effect.
  • Seismic rehabilitation of reinforced concrete structures.

 

Green roofs

  • Optimisation of green roofs: structural study and feasibility.
  • Analysis and monitoring of physical (energy, consumption, air quality) and social (justice, vulnerability, accessibility) effects of green roofs.

 

Territorial planning

  • Economic and territorial evaluation and planning.
  • Study and recommendations to mitigate the heat island effect.
  • Evaluation of green space quality using satellite images.
  • Assessment of earthquake-induced risk. Sustainable and participatory post-disaster reconstruction in high seismic risk areas.

Digitalisation

 

Digital twins, intelligent BIM models

  • Zero energy building.

 

Remote monitoring

  • Non-invasive tools to monitor large infrastructures (damage identification).
  • Predictive modelling of behaviour, maintenance and safety improvement of infrastructures considering future environmental changes.
  • Optimisation and monitoring products for critical infrastructure safety.
  • Auscultation, conservation and maintenance of infrastructures.

 

Additive manufacturing. 3D printing of recycled concrete

 

APPLICATION SECTORS

GOVERNMENT

URBANISM

RECYCLING

CONSTRUCTION

INFRASTRUCTURES

ENERGY

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