The development of new technology for the AEC industry has come in a lot of different forms, adding a variety of advantages for those who have been willing to take a chance on the new tools. For the most part, the focus of these tools – including from Geo Week News – has been on the operational effects, generally with regards to improvements around efficiency and the money that can be saved. However, we know that there are other improvements in this realm as well. To that end, as we look at stories highlighting innovation in the AEC space today, we find stories focusing on safety, other worker issues, as well as built world technology more generally.
Find links to the full stories below.
Can technology make construction safer?
Mike Hayes | Construction Briefing
As noted above, most of the focus around how technology can solve problems for the construction industry has been focused on operations. It makes sense, as the industry was notoriously inefficient and reliant on traditional methods that would feel absurd in some other, comparable sectors. Those operational advancements are very real and important, to be sure, but as this article lays out, technology can also help make job sites significantly safer for the workers.
Blog Series: Putting People to Work
Laura Black | Connected World
Technology is certainly becoming a bigger part of the construction industry, projects still rely almost entirely on human workers. While some may have visions of autonomous vehicles – and perhaps even humanoid robots – taking over job sites, we are still far from that reality if we are ever to even reach that point. So, what’s the best way to put people in the best position to get the job done? That’s the question Black aims to answer in this article, including how technology fits into the picture.
Whatever Happened to ‘Smart Cities’?
Philip Russo | Commercial Observer
This article touches on a fascinating change in how we think about future urbanism compared to a decade ago. It wasn’t all that long ago that the idea of “smart cities” dominated the public consciousness, with both positive and negative connotations. Today, though, we rarely hear any talk about “smart cities,” even as urbanization continues to increase and cities are building up. As Russo writes in this article, the main ideas of the smart city movement haven’t really gone away. It’s just transferred into the built world within the city rather than some of the public infrastructure.
