Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions about structural health monitoring and how StructureIQ works.
General
What is structural health monitoring (SHM)?
Structural health monitoring is the use of sensors and data analytics to continuously track the condition of a building, bridge, or other structure, detecting stress, vibration, displacement, and deterioration in real time rather than relying on periodic manual inspections.
How is StructureIQ different from manual inspections?
Manual inspections check a structure’s condition at a single point in time, often months or years apart, and can miss gradual damage like concrete micro-cracking or foundation settlement. StructureIQ’s wireless sensors monitor continuously, so early-stage deterioration and event-driven damage (earthquakes, impacts) are flagged automatically, often within hours instead of weeks.
How has StructureIQ’s technology been validated in the field?
StructureIQ’s technology has been proven in real deployments, not just lab testing. When a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Michoacán, Mexico in September 2022, StructureIQ’s SHM system installed at an IKEA store in Mexico City delivered automated safety alerts and structural analysis to building managers within hours, giving an automated safety clearance in a fraction of the time a manual re-inspection would normally take. That same real-time visibility has helped insurers and asset owners make faster, better-informed decisions in other deployments, including cable tension monitoring on the Ain Dubai (the world’s largest observation wheel) and the Jindo Bridge in South Korea, the largest wireless structural health monitoring deployment to date.
Insurance
How is StructureIQ used in insurance underwriting?
Insurers use StructureIQ’s continuous structural data to move from static, inspection-based risk models to real-time risk scoring. This supports more precise underwriting, faster claims verification after an event, and can serve as a data trigger for parametric insurance policies.
What data gap does StructureIQ fill for insurance underwriters?
Underwriters typically bind policies using standard COPE (Construction, Occupancy, Protection, Exposure) submission data, which misses a building’s actual structural condition. StructureIQ fills that gap with continuous, building-specific data on tilt, drift, and modal frequency, reducing adverse selection, underpricing, and accumulation risk across a portfolio.
How does StructureIQ help with insurance claims after an event?
StructureIQ captures time-stamped structural baselines before an event and delta reports after one, so insurers can distinguish pre-existing conditions from event-caused damage. This speeds up coverage decisions, reduces causation disputes, and lowers loss adjustment expenses.
What does a StructureIQ insurance pilot involve?
A typical pilot runs 90 days across 10 to 25 buildings. StructureIQ installs 2 to 3 wireless sensors and a cellular gateway per site (no IT integration required), then delivers baseline sheets, configurable alert thresholds, a simulated or real post-event delta report, and a portfolio memo suitable for underwriting committee review.
Construction
Can StructureIQ monitor buildings during construction, not just after completion?
Yes. StructureIQ’s Sentinel AI platform can be deployed during the construction phase itself, capturing load responses, material performance, and environmental effects from the earliest stages of a project rather than waiting until the structure is complete and periodic inspections begin.
What risks does structural monitoring help catch during construction?
Continuous sensing during construction can reveal how a structure actually behaves under real loading as it’s built, surfacing unexpected load responses or material performance issues early, when they’re far less costly to address than after the building is finished and occupied.
Bridges
How does StructureIQ monitor bridges?
StructureIQ deploys wireless Xnode accelerometers across a bridge’s full structure, including deck spans, girders, pier caps, bearing assemblies, and abutments, capturing continuous dynamic response data and delivering real-time structural condition intelligence through the Sentinel AI platform.
Can StructureIQ tell if a bridge has been struck by a vehicle?
Yes. StructureIQ provides real-time impact assessment for bridges, which is especially valuable for low-clearance spans that are prone to vehicle strikes. Owners and railroads can quickly distinguish minor hits from structurally significant impacts, avoiding unnecessary closures on bridges that see thousands of collisions industry-wide each year.
Does StructureIQ work on pedestrian bridges, or just vehicle bridges?
StructureIQ monitors both. Pedestrian bridges face their own silent structural risks, such as vibration and fatigue in suspension and truss footbridges, and StructureIQ’s dense sensor arrays and automated alerts are designed to catch that damage before it becomes visible or dangerous.
AI & Technology
What is Sentinel AI?
Sentinel AI is StructureIQ’s analytics platform, built on over a decade of structural health monitoring research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It converts raw sensor data into risk scores, threshold-based alerts, and portfolio-level dashboards for asset owners, engineers, and insurers.
How does StructureIQ’s sensor technology work?
StructureIQ deploys the Xnode, a wireless smart sensor with a high-resolution accelerometer, directly onto structural elements. No coring or wiring is required, a typical bridge deployment takes about a day. Sensors stream data over a cellular network to StructureIQ’s Sentinel AI platform, which distinguishes routine loading from genuine structural events with a false-positive rate under 2%.
What is the Structural Condition Index (SCI)?
The SCI is Sentinel AI’s core output: a continuous, normalized 0 to 100 score per asset, combining modal analysis, fatigue accumulation, anomaly classification, and trend analysis into a single Healthy, Watch, or At Risk rating. It’s sector-agnostic, so it works the same way across buildings, bridges, offshore platforms, and industrial structures.
How does Sentinel AI avoid false alarms?
Before any alert is generated, Sentinel AI’s edge processing normalizes and detrends incoming sensor data, then uses machine learning to classify genuine structural events separately from routine ambient noise like wind, traffic, or process vibration. This keeps StructureIQ’s false-positive rate under 2%, so engineers and underwriters only see alerts that matter.
Sensors & Installation
How is StructureIQ different from traditional building monitoring that uses wired sensors?
Traditional wired SHM systems require running physical cabling to every sensor location, often meaning drilling, conduit, and significant disruption to a structure’s operations. StructureIQ’s Xnode sensors are wireless: they attach directly to structural elements and stream data over a long-range wireless link (over 1 km line-of-sight) to a gateway, then on to the cloud over a cellular network. A typical bridge deployment takes about a day instead of the weeks a wired installation can require, with up to 48 sensors per gateway synchronized to under 20 microseconds.
How are StructureIQ Xnode sensors installed, magnetically or mounted?
Both, the mounting method depends on the surface. Xnode sensors ship with an included magnetic mount, ideal for fast, temporary deployment on steel structures like beams and girders. For other surfaces, StructureIQ also offers a clamp mount for cables, an adhesive plate for flat concrete or composite surfaces where drilling isn’t possible, and screw mounting for wooden beams, certain concrete surfaces, or high-vibration environments. In every case, sensors are placed on load-bearing structural elements, not decorative or non-structural features.
How are StructureIQ Xnode sensors powered?
Each Xnode sensor has an internal 10,000 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery, charged from a 5V DC external source, either a wall charger or a solar panel. Building deployments typically use a wall charger plugged into a standard outlet, while bridge and remote deployments typically use the included solar panel. A full charge takes about 3 hours, and the sensor’s IP67-rated, weatherproof enclosure supports continuous operation from -20°C to 60°C.
Security
What is StructureIQ’s overall approach to cybersecurity and data protection?
Customer data is handled on a dedicated cloud platform, cloud.structureiq.ai, that is architecturally separate from StructureIQ’s public website and email systems. Sensor data reaches this platform through encrypted transmission, is protected by industry-standard encryption, authentication, and firewall controls, and is segregated on a per-customer basis, so security isn’t bolted on, it’s built into how the platform is structured.
How is sensor data transmitted and secured in transit?
Data from StructureIQ’s wireless sensors is sent directly and securely to StructureIQ’s cloud platform using SSL/TLS-encrypted messaging, the same encryption standard used to protect sensitive data across the web, before it is processed, analyzed, and stored.
Is customer data hosted separately from StructureIQ’s public website and email?
Yes. Customer data is processed and stored on cloud.structureiq.ai, which runs on a different hosting provider, at a different physical location, with different access credentials than StructureIQ’s corporate website (structureiq.ai) or its email service. There is no connection or data exchange between them, so risk factors affecting the marketing site or email do not extend to the platform that stores customer data.
How is StructureIQ’s cloud platform protected from unauthorized access?
cloud.structureiq.ai is protected using industry-standard encryption, authentication, and firewall methods, and both the data-processing server and the web-based user interface are configured with security as a core requirement.
Is data from different customers kept separate?
Yes. Within StructureIQ’s cloud platform, each customer’s data is kept in a separate data store with its own separate access credentials, which limits the scope of impact in the unlikely event that any single account were ever compromised.
Does StructureIQ address broader domain-level risks like email spoofing?
Yes. Following an UpGuard security assessment, StructureIQ added and adjusted DMARC and SPF policies for the structureiq.ai domain to reduce email-related risks such as spoofing and phishing.