Eleni Chatzi, Professor at ETH Zurich, presented a transdisciplinary approach to infrastructure maintenance and monitoring, viewing the built environment as a dynamic, living system. Her team employs a combination of sensor technologies, data analysis, physics-based models, and machine learning to assess, predict, and improve the structural health of bridges, wind turbines, buildings, and transportation networks. She illustrated how form and structure — ranging from metamaterials to graph-based models—play a crucial role not just in design, but also in interpreting complex system behaviours, identifying damage, and managing risks such as climate change, seismic activity, and even cyberattacks. Her work pushes toward real-time, hybrid digital twins and embraces the synergy between data, physics, and expert knowledge to foster resilient infrastructure systems.
“Even simple movements — like walking, falling, or dragging a chair — emit vibrations that travel through solid materials. These waves carry signatures that can be measured, decomposed, and analysed. With enough labelled data, we can distinguish between a person falling and a chair being moved. It’s all in the signal.”
— Eleni Chatzi
