Download: Connected - advanced optical technologies for a sustainable built environment

Dr Haris Alexakis, Lecturer in Civil Engineering, Aston University and David J. Webb, 50th Anniversary Professor of Photonics, Aston University, explain how advances in photonics could have a transformative impact on the sustainable built environment.

Introduction

Harnessing the properties of light to understand - and indeed control - the physical world has been practised since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Democritus. In recent times, the term photonics has been coined to describe this technology, and it is having a transformative impact across multiple sectors, including medicine, manufacturing and of course telecommunications, where it forms the backbone of the internet. The ability to sense and communicate using light is also becoming very relevant in civil engineering where it can help address some increasingly important issues.