As LEED celebrates its 10th anniversary, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) reports that one billion square feet of buildings around the world have now been LEED certified. Although that is just a drop in the global bucket, certification has helped to spur green construction; according to the Green Outlook 2011: Green Trends Driving Growth report by McGraw--Hill Construction (MHC), LEED specification is mentioned in 71% of all U.S. projects valued at over $50 million.

There are over 600,000 bridges in the United States and almost 13% have some sort of structural damage. Most bridges still require field methods to assess this damage, including visual inspection, dye penetrant testing, magnetic particle testing, and ultrasonic techniques. These field methods can miss structural problems or fail to catch them in time to prevent a catastrophe. In the case of the Minneapolis steel truss bridge that collapsed in 2007, resulting in 13 lives lost, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) ruled that 16 of the gusset plates that connected the trusses failed. Smart bridge technologies are being implemented in the redesign, providing more efficient and real-time monitoring and inspection.

Although there are far more residential fires than those involving non-residential structures, commercial fires still have a hefty price: in 2009 the 103,500 non-residential fires cost 105 lives and over $3 billion in losses, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Preventive actions are critical to avoid these losses altogether. That’s where a properly designed and installed fire alarm system comes in.