• Imagine a levy or earth dam that monitors itself daily, identifies its weak link, and takes action to fix it.
• Imagine a statewide or regionwide remote sensing-driven intelligent system that identifies mm-scale movements in rock and soil formations - precursors to major landslides and rockslides - and deploys field personnel to take preventative action.
• Imagine smart tools that see ahead of the soil and rock during drilling and can document the strength and deformation properties of the drilled pier or anchor before it is placed.

Society desperately needs new ways to design, construct and operate geosystems!

Natural and engineered rock and soil slopes, urban underground construction environments, massive earth dams, groundwater remediation systems, and underground civil infrastructure such as bridge foundations, utilities, pipelines, ports, and tunnels are all examples of geosystems that are vital to the security and welfare of a functional society. These geosystems are threatened by natural hazards (earthquake, landslide, flooding), by natural deterioration (aging), by pollutants, and more recently by the threat of terrorism. 

Geosystems and their behavior are complex. They include spatial and temporal processes at the micro, meso and macro scales. They involve soil and rock, are multi-phase (solids, liquids, gases) and are heterogeneous. The combination of their behavioral complexity, the uncertainty of natural hazards, terrorism, and aging, and the consequences of failure combine to create a monumental challenge for our technical and civic communities. 

The current approach to designing, constructing and operating geosystems involves sparse spatial information, passive observation of external behavior that is often after a failure (e.g., ruptured levy), predicting response to threats with limited information, and engineering in a reactive manner. Effective geosystems require improved continuous monitoring and decision support to maintain peak efficiency and prevent catastrophic damage and loss of life. Intelligent Geosystems promise a much improved approach! 

The rapid evolution of sensing and information technology, remote sensing, sensor networking and rapid computation provides us with the means to dramatically improve our understanding of geosystem behavior and to transform the way we construct, operate, and manage complex geosystems. SmartGeo is the pursuit of intelligent geosystems that can sense their environment and adapt to improve performance. Imagine a levy or earth dam that monitors itself daily, identifies its weak link, and takes action to fix it. Imagine a statewide or regionwide remote sensing-driven intelligent system that identifies mm-scale movements in rock and soil formations - precursors to major landslides and rockslides - and deploys field personnel to take preventative action. Imagine smart tools that see ahead of the soil and rock during drilling and can document the strength and deformation properties of the drilled pier or anchor before it is placed. Some additional example Intelligent Geosystems are provided below.    

Intelligent Infrastructure 

An Intelligent Earth Dam or Levy would sense its environment, characterize the occurance and extent of internal damage (e.g., erosion, strength reduction) due to aging or loading. Through adaptive modeling, the intelligent earth dam would continually reassess its performance capability and risk level. An intelligent earth dam would consist of a comprehensive sensor network spatialy deployed throughout the critical infrastructure. Sensing efforts might include wireless nodes, remote sensing and/or geophysical techniques. Continuous performance assessment would enable educated decision making by technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Intelligent Soil and Groundwater Remediation

Contamination of soil, fractured rock and groundwater from industrial and agricultural activities is one of the most challenging environmental problems facing the world. Remediation of contaminants can be difficult and time consuming because of the highly heterogeneous ground-water flow and transport properties of geomaterials. Self-organizing wireless sensor networks (as shown here) provide feedback on where the treatment is occurring dramatically improve remediation efforts. Integration of data with the decision support tool enables Intelligent Remediation.

Intelligent GeoConstruction

Numerous geo-disciplines (e.g., civil, geotechnical, geological, mining, environmental) require precision construction techniques to navigate urban environments nested with utilities, minimize environmental footprints, and improve safety. Sensing-while-drilling, intelligent soil compaction, and smart cutting are three examples of Intelligent Construction approaches pursued within SmartGeo. These intelligent construction efforts offer transformative improvement over current methods that are blind, i.e., use no monitoring and act reactively. Real-time monitoring and intelligent construction can expedite construction, saving billions of dollars, and can improve safety.