STRATEGIC RESEARCH FOCUS AREA
Infrastructure connects our world
Infrastructure systems are at the intersection of human society and our engineered world. As civil engineers, we balance new and existing systems, assessing when to repair versus when to replace. We have a pressing need for resilient and sustainable infrastructure to meet societal demand while addressing the challenges of population growth and climate change.
More than buildings and bridges
Our research develops solutions that integrate engineering, social science, and economics to provide decision support for natural and human-made threats. We use advanced modeling to understand the impacts of disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires on infrastructure. Our models couple the performance of buildings, multi-modal transportation systems, and water and energy networks, examining their interdependencies and impacts on the social and economic institutions they support. We conduct large-scale experiments and simulations to inform risk-informed decision-making and strengthen community resilience.
- Damage and loss analysis
- Recovery modeling
- Climate change impacts on communities
- Risk Assessment and performance-based engineering of physical systems
- Interdependent physical-social-economic modeling and analysis
- Bridges over water
- Life cycle assessment and cost optimization
- Sustainable material applications
- Natural Hazard Modeling
- Real-time risk assessment and decision
- Optimization of systems and their design
- Transportation management systems
- Structural health monitoring
- Integrating physical, social, and economic systems