…and they’re getting safer

The Parliament of Canada’s Peace Tower, the 1937 international Thousand Islands Bridge, the century-old Canada Revenue Agency headquarters – all are now considerably safer, thanks to the work of Montreal start-up Sensequake. CEO Farshad Mirshafiei’s team sets up super-sensitive wireless sensors to measure minuscule vibrations in a structure, then uses AI to analyze that data to find hidden defects or integrity concerns that become majorly vulnerable during an earthquake. Next up: nothing short of disrupting the whole civil engineering market. “AI can look at every possible design and material to select the most reliable and cost-efficient solution,” Mirshafiei says. “We want our software to go from seismic risk and structural monitoring to actually designing buildings for engineers.”