Engineering 4.0: The future of smart cities in Africa

The term Smart Cities might conjure up ideas of robots, flying cars and buildings that know what you want before you do. But according to UP researchers, Smart Cities are cities where there are jobs and food for everyone, different parts of the city work together to make for a better place to live, and these improvements are driven by gathering and using data in the best way possible.

Prof Nelisha Pillay, Wynand Steyn, Ajith Abraham, Chrisna du Plessis, Schalk Els

November 26, 2020

Researchers

Professor Wynand Steyn

Professor Wynand Steyn is Chair of the School of Engineering and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology. He has been involved in research at UP for the past 12 years.

Prof Steyn believes that his field of research contributes to the betterment of society because it supports improvements in pavement engineering, transportation systems and user experiences of such facilities. This improvement of infrastructure that is used daily has a direct influence on people’s lives. Pavement engineering and related disciplines incorporate sensors for infrastructure, and monitors the behaviour and performance of pavements and related infrastructure.
The professor is involved in research activities at Innovation Africa@UP through supporting other faculties and institutes with data collection efforts on the larger Hillcrest Campus. He works mainly on pavement engineering, agricultural transportation and innovative sensors technologies for infrastructure monitoring.

For Prof Steyn, various mentors in the early days of his career, mainly at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, contributed to developing his research interests. He regards these mentors as role models who were involved in his development as an academic and a researcher over a career that has spanned 31 years.

A recent research highlight for him has been monitoring pavement-related effects on agricultural transportation. He’s written several articles on related aspects over the past two years. Ultimately, Prof Steyn hopes to improve infrastructure and the effect that it has on communities.

He encourages young people who are interested in his field to read, observe, experiment, measure and learn from what they see around them. “Be inquisitive; ask questions; try stuff that has not been done before.”
Outside of academia, Prof Steyn enjoys reading and photography. He also has a remote pilot licence.

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