When Disaster Strikes, Time Matters
Natural disasters don’t just disrupt—they expose the fragility of our infrastructure. From hurricanes to earthquakes to wildfires like the 2023 Maui disaster, the hours and days that follow are critical. The faster we can assess damage, the faster we can recover.
But traditional inspections are slow, manual, and often miss hidden structural issues. What if our buildings and infrastructure could tell us what’s wrong—immediately, accurately, and without human intervention?
At Kliskatek, we believe the answer lies in batteryless sensing and Ambient IoT.
The Hidden Cost of “Waiting to Know”
The Maui wildfires, fueled by drought and wind, became one of the deadliest in U.S. history.
Beyond the visible destruction, subtle structural damage often goes unnoticed until it becomes a bigger problem: cracked pipes, weakened beams, compromised foundations.
Manual inspections are essential—but they’re also reactive, time-consuming, and expensive. And in large-scale disasters, they simply don’t scale.
Smarter Infrastructure Starts with Sensors
By embedding battery-free sensors into buildings, bridges, and public infrastructure, we can create systems that self-report their condition in real time. These sensors can monitor:
- 🧱 Structural deformation
- 💧 Humidity and water ingress
- 🧭 Orientation and tilt
And because they’re powered by ambient energy—RF, vibration, or thermal—they require no batteries, no maintenance, and can operate for decades.
This is Ambient IoT in action: infrastructure that quietly monitors itself, ready to alert us when something goes wrong.
Structural Health Monitoring #SHM
From Coffee Machines to Critical Infrastructure
If we can embed sensors in coffee machines to track capsule usage, we can—and should—embed them in our buildings to track safety.
The challenge, of course, is scale. Deploying thousands of sensors across a city is a significant investment. But the long-term benefits—faster recovery, reduced risk, and better resource allocation—far outweigh the upfront cost.
Batteryless technology helps bridge that gap by eliminating the need for ongoing maintenance, making large-scale deployments more feasible than ever.
Final Thoughts
Disasters will happen. The question is: how prepared are we to respond?
At Kliskatek, we’re building sensing systems that don’t just collect data—they enable resilience. By embedding intelligence into the very fabric of our infrastructure, we can move from reactive recovery to proactive readiness.
Let’s stop waiting to know—and start designing for what’s next.