RISK ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF STRUCTURAL AND INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS

Critical infrastructure systems (CIs) are becoming increasingly vulnerable to system-wide failure primarily due to aging, natural and manmade hazards, climate change, and increased interdependencies, among other factors. Quantitative and qualitative assessment of the associated risk is crucial in pre-event planning and post-event response.

Risk Assessment and Management of Structural and Infrastructure Systems (RAMSIS) lab develops and applies probabilistic risk analysis frameworks to various CIs and their components to assess their reliability and resilience against perturbations. This can provide valuable knowledge about a number of principal effects such as traffic disruption, impact on the regional and global economy, and resilience of systems and communities. 

RAMSIS Lab research focuses on:

• Numerical modeling and fragility assessment of complex systems, such as seaports, bridges, and physical assets of power grids with consideration of soil-foundation-structure interactions and liquefaction effects
• Probabilistic modeling of deterioration processes of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures coupled with FE simulations
• Optimal maintenance policies for large aging infrastructure assets using stochastic methods 
• Advanced protection of critical geo-structural systems against extreme hazards such as earthquakes and strong winds using passive, active, and semi-active control strategies based on stochastic methods
• Reliability and resilience assessment of geo-structural systems and critical infrastructures against natural and manmade hazards

The above research objectives are accomplished by bridging stochastic methods and Finite Element models to realistically model the system of interest and capture various sources of uncertainties.