rCITI Seminar -Visiting Speaker - Dr Elise Miller-Hooks

TOPIC:

People-centric Models for Roadway Activity Prioritization in Routine and Disrupted Environments

 DATE/TIME:

 Mon 27 February  2023, 12noon – 1pm AEST

 VENUE:

 University of NSW, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (H20). level 1, room 101

 BIOGRAPHY:

Dr. Elise Miller-Hooks holds the Bill and Eleanor Hazel Endowed Chair in Infrastructure Engineering and is the Interim Department Chair of the Sid & Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at George Mason University. She is also an advisor to the World Bank Group and the founding Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Sustainability Analytics and Modeling journal. Dr. Miller-Hooks previously served as a program director at the U.S. National Science Foundation and on the faculties of the University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State University and Duke University. Dr. Miller-Hooks received her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas – Austin and B.S. in Civil Engineering from Lafayette College. She has expertise in: multi-hazard civil infrastructure resilience quantification and protection; disruption planning and response; sustainability; stochastic and dynamic network algorithms; intermodal rail- and maritime-based freight transport; real-time routing and fleet management: paratransit, delivery, ridesharing and bikeways; and collaborative and multi-objective decision-making.

ABSTRACT:

This talk will describe developed mathematical and algorithmic techniques for prioritizing roadway improvement and restoration actions in routine and disrupted environments taking a people-centric approach. This approach puts the system users and community member needs at the core of the optimization. Whether due to a disaster event or more ordinary deterioration processes, roadway improvement activities are necessary. In many locations, they are common and the impacts of even routine maintenance are ever-present. Considering these activities as temporary nuisances that will lead to a future with perfectly performing facilities is idealistic. It is important to consider the effects of these activities on the system users not only in the long run, once they are complete, but also during their execution. Taking a similar, life-in-the-present perspective, post- or peri-disaster restoration actions take time to implement, and the services, such as health care, fueling stations, and food supplies, that our roadways and other infrastructure lifelines support are needed even before restoration is complete. The order in which actions are taken to restore the roadway and other supporting lifelines can affect the availability of these key critical community functions. The developed methods guide these peri- and post-disaster restoration actions by putting critical community functions at the forefront, prioritizing and scheduling activities around their recovery, rather than the recovery of the roadways and other supporting lifelines.