Monitoring Infrastructure Remotely

The Internet of Things (IOT) stands for large amounts of connected sensors. A rather abstract definition! Describing which sensors provide what data how often and deliver it where to achieve what would be more tangible. Let's have a look how infrastructure could be monitored this way - infrastructure for mining, energy generation, water supply and road and rail traffic throughout its life cycle. As it is built, operated, maintained and in some cases decommisioned.

Figure 1: IOT driven insights from sensors to data analytics (Courtesy Sensemetrics)

Technically the concept (Figure 1) requires sensors monitoring infrastructure, connectivity processing and transporting sensor data and analytics uncovering underlying information. Leveraging this information - also refered to as insights - for decision making is the most important step from a business perspective.

Implementation is still fragmented to date. Different vendors contribute hardware and software components which do not necessarily interface seamlessly to each other. Companies interested in leveraging the concept for digitial transformation of their business are facing significant barriers of entry. Not using the potential for increasing safety and productivity puts them at a sigificant disadvantage compared to competitors that master the IOT. Those who do need to manage fairly complex projects. 

New players on the market set out to streamline this fragmented situation by serving as a one-stop-shop for the entire solution. Sensemetrics is one of them specializing in monitoring infrastructure remotely. In our next blog post we shall detail their approach to the different verticals mentioned above.