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Start-up's sensors keep tabs on bridges' health

TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION, Boston Globe Business Section, April 14, 2003

SCOTT KIRSNER

@Large

During a December rush hour 35 years ago, a steel connector in a suspension bridge linking Ohio and West Virginia suddenly failed. Within minutes, the bridge had collapsed into the icy Ohio River, taking with it 31 cars.

Forty-six people died.

The collapse of the Silver River Bridge changed the way bridges are inspected in the United States. Today, each of the nation's 600,000 bridges gets an on-site checkup at least once every two years.

Now, founders of a Waltham start-up company want to change the way bridges are inspected - again. They're hoping it won't take a similar tragedy. But, unfortunately, tragedy often spurs rapid change, while start-ups peddling new technology have a harder time.

Senera was founded last year and has only three full-time employees. But the company has some impressive backers and an intriguing idea: Why not install wireless sensors on older, problem-prone bridges to get a continual stream of data about their condition?

On Senera's board are Richard Taylor, a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation, Jim Becker of Skanska USA Building, and Glenn Bell, CEO of the structural engineering firm Simpson Gumpertz & Heger. (Skanska built Gillette Field in Foxborough; Simpson Gumpertz assessed the structural health of the Pentagon and several buildings around New York's Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks of 2001.)

Senera's focus is on bad bridges - the 14 percent of bridges nationwide categorized as "deficient." (In Massachusetts, 13 percent of the state's 2,900 bridges fall into that category.)

Deficient doesn't mean a bridge needs to be closed or is in imminent danger of collapse; it just requires extra attention in the form of more frequent visual inspections, conducted by state employees or contractors - and paid for by the Federal Highway Administration.

Senera proposes to affix sensors to a bridge, all wirelessly connected in what might be called a "bridge area network." A typical bridge - like the ones that cross over the Massachusetts Turnpike - might require 10 to 20 sensors.

"You might have some [sensors] that measure stress and strain, others to gauge corrosion, others watching

 

Shawn Burke, CTO and Chris Adams, CEO

temperature or vibration," says Chris Adams, Senera's chief executive.

Chloride sensors could watch for high concentrations of salt, which can penetrate concrete and eventually eat away at the rebar inside. For bridges across bodies of water, some sensors might even be placed underwater to determine whether the soil around a submerged bridge pillar had shifted in a dangerous way.

Information from the sensors on the bridge would be collected on site and sent to Senera's data center via one of three methods: the cellular network, satellite, or a land line.

Senera's software would interpret the data coming from the bridge and present it to the customer - a state highway department - on a secure website.

"The customer wants information that will let them better understand how a bridge is performing, and make quantitative decisions about repair or replacement," explains Shawn Burke, Senera's chief technology officer and the former deputy director of the Photonics Center at Boston University.

Better data would be useful for state agencies, says Taylor, the former transportation secretary, who is an investor in Senera. (The company has raised several hundred thousand dollars from "angel" investors like Taylor and is hoping to raise a $10 million first round of venture capital this year.)

"In a lot of cases, the squeaky wheel gets the oil," Taylor says. "A legislator from Western Mass. could call me and say, `My bridge needs to be repaired right now.' Those calls were very tough to handle, because you didn't have an objective measure or standard that they would accept."

Senera's system would produce such an objective ranking of the various bridges that had been outfitted with sensors, Taylor says.

 

Adams says Senera's approach to monitoring the structural health of bridges is made much more viable by the current generation of wireless technology.

"If you had to wire all the sensors together, it would be prohibitively expensive to install and maintain," he says. But relying on wireless has its own complications - like interference from other devices using the same unlicensed part of the radio spectrum.

Adams, once a researcher at MIT's Human Genome Lab, started his first company, Mosaic Technologies, with a $5,000 loan from his uncle. That company made genetic analysis tools for researchers. He explains that Senera won't actually manufacture its own sensors or wireless networking gear - but rather will use hardware made by others.

"Our domain expertise is where to place the sensors [on a given bridge],"he says, "and how to interpret the data that you get from it."

Senera is in discussions with three states in the Northeast, including Massachusetts, about conducting a pilot test of the system. For its eventual paying customers, the company intends to provide the equipment for free but charge an annual per-bridge service fee.

Senera is confident its system will work. But the founders also acknowledge they're entering into a high-risk business. "The dream scenario is we catch an imminent collapse about to happen, and we can prevent it," says Burke.

But the nightmare scenario is that the system doesn't spot a tiny-but-important hiccup in the data, and a disaster occurs on Senera's watch.

The biggest challenge confronting Senera will be convincing customers like the Massachusetts Highway Department that its system can save them money. (In the current budget environment, it's hard to imagine states looking to spend more money in return for more nuanced data about their bridge inventory.)

That means supplying data that can convincingly show states that certain bridges they thought needed to be replaced may only require repair, or allowing states to rely on Senera's continual data feed instead of conducting frequent inspections of problem bridges. (Some are inspected as often as every three or six months.)

"We're receptive to the idea," says Jon Carlisle, spokesman for MassHighway. "But until it's tested further, we wouldn't be willing to forgo the frequency of regular bridge inspections by a human being. There's the cost-savings potential, but we need a degree of comfort with the technology, and we need a degree of comfort that the Federal Highway Administration will allow it. And we'd certainly have to consider [spending on Senera's service] within a budget context."

Barring a tragedy, Senera's sales process could be as slow as traffic over the Sagamore Bridge on Memorial Day Weekend. But Senera's founders and board members know what they're up against.

"The problem of deteriorating infrastructure is huge," says Bell, chief executive of Simpson Gumpertz in Waltham. "But we're not unrealistic about what it will take to prove the technology's value."

 

For further information contact: Senera Corporation www.senera.com or by e-mail info@senera.com Tel. 781-907-9000, Fax 781-907-9009 41 seyon St., Suite 500, Waltham, MA 02453

 

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