Projects
We love rethinking civil engineering. Our development projects emerge where research, experience, and curiosity meet the future of the construction industry.
Our goal: practical solutions that plan, build, and maintain infrastructure — guiding the Swiss construction industry into the future, just as other sectors have already done.
Why are we hearing more and more about fatigue?
Fatigue is a phenomenon of progressive failure due to variable and cyclic loads: even without high peak stresses, repeated loading weakens the material until cracking and eventual failure occur.
The topic is highly relevant today: around half of Switzerland’s bridges were built between the 1960s and 1980s, are now over 60 years old, and fatigue was not considered in the original calculations.
Fatigue assessments are therefore becoming increasingly important; simplified calculation methods have often proven insufficient for today’s demands on structural optimization and sustainability.
Our Vision
NÄXTE has many years of experience in simulation of real road and rail traffic and, in collaboration with EPFL, was able to work on projects related to updating standards participate at European and Swiss level.
We have developed proprietary algorithms that Weigh-in-Motion analyze weight-in-motion (WIM) data and generate virtual traffic. This data is used to create cycle histograms and to apply real traffic directly to static finite element models.
We are expanding our methods to fill data gaps — for example, by interpolating measurement stations, generating simulated traffic from linked data, and using artificial intelligence. In addition to road data, we have successfully implemented traffic data from several Swiss railway lines.
Das Potenzial des Einsatzes realer Verkehrsdaten wurde in zahlreichen in numerous practical projects: Schadensakkumulation mit realen Fahrzeugdaten ermöglichte es, to check the structural integrity against Ermüdung zu
having to carry, ohne unnötige Verstärkungsmassnahmen vornehmen zu müssen.
NEXTGemini — the semantic digital twin with linked data and AI
With NEXTGemini, we are developing the next step for the construction industry:
From mere data storage to a platform that connects data with linked data and truly understands it through AI.
What is NEXTGemini?
NEXTGemini is a data environment platform (Connected Common Data Environment) for semantic digital twins in the infrastructure sector, for example, for bridges.
It combines geometric data (BIM models in IFC 4.3) with heterogeneous sensor data — such as traffic data, WIM measurements, strain, and weather data — in a semantic graph database.
This creates an intelligent structural graph with embedded sensors, which not only collects data but also links and interprets it. An initial application is the monitoring of expansion joints (deck transitions), among the most heavily stressed components of a bridge. By linking traffic and expansion data, critical conditions can be detected early. Even complex questions — such as how often permissible movement limits were exceeded under heavy traffic — can be answered accurately.
NEXTGemini thus provides the foundation for a wide range of applications: from rapid condition assessment and monitoring of individual components to comprehensive fatigue assessments of bridges.