Deutsche Telekom said the system will be linked to the IoT for bridges, tunnels, building and other concrete infrastructure at the airport
Düsseldorf Airport, one of the most important German hubs in international air traffic, has teamed with Deutsche Telekom and its partner BS2 Sicherheitssysteme to develop an internet of things-based digital monitoring system for bridges, tunnels, building and other concrete infrastructure at the airport.
Deutsche Telekom said that sensors installed along the airport’s access roads to its tank farms, for example, will be able to identify damages to the roads before they result in traffic bottlenecks and monitor temperatures, humidity and corrosion to identify “critical conditions” or irreparable damages to concrete structures.
The data is exchanged over Deutsche Telekom’s NB-IoT network in near-real-time, the telco said.
“Previously, material samples were needed to gain information about a building’s condition – a complex method that usually involved destruction,” said Michael Hohenecker, head of data management and building inspection at real estate management, Düsseldorf Airport. “We have a bottleneck here at the central tank farm. The digital solution protects us against unforeseeable damage to the access road and the disruptions to tank usage that it would entail.”
Other roads around the Düsseldorf Airport are also being equipped with sensors, which have a lifetime of up to 70 years. They can be installed in new construction products or retrofitted in existing concrete structures.
“Düsseldorf Airport is one of the pioneers in Germany that is using IoT technology for its road constructions at the airport,” said Ingo Hofacker, responsible for IoT business at Deutsche Telekom. “Networking of transport infrastructure is growing in importance. The new network of equipment and sensors is an ideal foundation for data transmission.”
Another place where sensors from BS2 Sicherheitssysteme are being deployed is the Köln-Ost junction, where Germany’s Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) is testing the sensors on their Cologne test grounds, together with Deutsche Telekom’s equipment and sensor network.
At the end of last year, Deutsche Telekom said its NB-IoT network was already available at approximately 300 locations across Germany including Berlin/Potsdam, Cologne/Bonn, the Ruhr basin, Mannheim/Heidelberg and Stuttgart.
Deutsche Telekom plans to complete the network’s country-wide build by the end of 2018. The European operator had initially kicked off its NB-IoT deployment in Germany in June 2017.
More than 200 German companies are currently testing NB-IoT and are also working to develop applications using the technology. Deutsche Telekom said it provides support to these firms in many ways, in particular with development and test packs, SIM cards, NB-IoT connectivity and access to Deutsche Telekom’s Cloud of Things platform, an IoT platform which enables users to access device data, to set threshold values, for example, for alarms, perform device updates and control machines remotely.
The telco is also deploying NB-IoT networks in other European subsidiaries including Austria, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia.
