Research


This video provides an additional overview of my work.

Civil infrastructure systems, such as buildings, pipelines, roadways, bridges and airports are the backbone of any nation. They directly impact the sustainability and safety of a country as well as the quality of life of its citizens. However, aging infrastructure systems are facing increasing demands due to urbanization, climate change, and their changing user profile. At the same time, these systems are required to operate with reduced resources.

This combination of factors demands that civil engineers transform the way we design, construct, and operate these systems by using objective information and assessment to enable proactive and data-driven decision-making. In my research, my team of researchers work to enable this transformation through supporting the decisions of engineers and managers during construction and infrastructure operations and management.

There is no doubt that engineers and managers involved in construction and facility/infrastructure operations need situational awareness about the as-is conditions when making daily decisions and developing short- and long-term plans. Yet, currently, data that is incorrectly formatted, inaccessible, or missing limits engineers’ situational awareness. Advances in reality capture technologies, such as 3D imaging, in-situ sensing, equipment on-board instrumentation and electronic tagging, streamline the capturing of the as-is conditions on job sites. The data collected from these technologies, integrated with building information models depicting the as-planned conditions, can help create and store the history of as-is conditions of a facility to support a variety of decisions that engineers and managers need to make. While the opportunities associated with integrating building information models and data capture technologies are compelling, several challenges persist for effective usage of these technologies.

Our research addresses these challenges, which include: assessing the accuracy of the data collected at the field; developing and evaluating data processing and data fusion approaches; formalizing integrated representation of building information models and sensor and other relevant data; and investigating and developing approaches for analyzing and visualizing such integrated information models. This work ultimately intends to support proactive, well-informed decision-making by the engineers and managers that maintain our vital civil infrastructure systems.

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Research Team

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Past Researchers

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