What if your home was ablaze, but told firefighters how likely it was to collapse? What if your home could let you know how its shear strength survived the last earthquake. And what if it could tell you the likelihood of it losing its roof in the next hurricane?

Academic researchers say your home can do all those things and more -- if it's constructed with so-called "smart bricks" or other building materials embedded with electronic sensors.

Scientists at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say their "smart brick" is a no-brainer.

"We are living with more and more smart electronics all around us, but we still live and work in fairly dumb buildings. By making our buildings smarter, we can improve both our comfort and safety," said Chang Liu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university.

Liu along with graduate student Jon Engel have stirred up a batch of technological soup -- flexible polymer sensors, signal processing and wireless technology -- to create building materials that can report building conditions to a remote computer.

The prototype is a "smart brick" built into a wall to monitor the building's temperature, vibration and movement. The researchers say the information could be vital to firefighters battling a blazing skyscraper, or to rescue workers who need to know the soundness of an earthquake-damaged home.

Not only a disaster-prevention device, property mangers and homeowners could use the technology to maintain and repair buildings. Homeowners, for example, could keep abreast of air leaks or moisture intrusion to improve energy efficiency or avoid mold.

While the scientists' prototype is a brick, the technology can be added to any building material including concrete blocks, structural steel, lumber, roofing materials and many others. Construction workers can handle the material just like any other building material.

"Our proof-of-concept brick is just one example of where you can have the sensor, signal processor, wireless communication link and battery packaged in one compact unit," Liu said.

The National Science Foundation funded the work which has spun off a company Integrated Micro Devices Corp..

Liu says the company has trademarked the product to pursue commercialization and licensing the technology for use by material and building companies.

"This innovation could change the face of the construction industry," Liu says.

Published: August 24, 2004

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.