Getting a virtual handle on extensive data from naval ships and structures

4429684e-ae8d-405e-870a-3b7aefe68162 (Martha Bushong) — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 20:41:35 +0000

Getting a virtual handle on extensive data from naval ships and structures 4429684e-ae8d-… Thu, 11/30/2017 - 15:41

David Lattanzi's research hopes to develop new methods for integrating and modeling engineering information to improve life-cycle prediction capabilities. Photo by Creative Services.

David Lattanzi, assistant professor of civil, environmental and infrastructure engineering in Mason's Volgenau School of Engineering, is working on a project to make it easier for the people who monitor and analyze data about the performance of naval ships and structures, to understand and act on the information they gather.

Naval vessels, as well as many other engineered systems, must undergo routine surveys throughout their life-cycles to assess their integrity and the need for repairs and retrofits. Through these surveys, a broad range of information is collected. Most of this data is not easily integrated or correlated, and it is typically not structured in a manner that allows for engineering analyses.

The goal of this research is to develop a framework for integrating these sources of data to enable the application of a range of new and advanced data analytics techniques. The concept is to create a living virtual model, or “digital twin,” of a structure that can provide a platform for data fusion and analytics. The result of the program will be new methods for integrating and modeling engineering information to improve life-cycle prediction capabilities.

Lattanzi received $391,000 from the U.S. Department of the Navy for this research. He will be working with two student assistants as part of the project: Sara Mohammadi (a Ph.D. student) and Nicole Nmair (a Master's student). He will begin his work in January 2018 and complete this project in June 2021.

Quantifying resilience of critical infrastructure

4429684e-ae8d-405e-870a-3b7aefe68162 (Martha Bushong) — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 12:03:13 +0000

Quantifying resilience of critical infrastructure 4429684e-ae8d-… Tue, 03/28/2017 - 08:03

Learn About Sustainable Infrastructure

Meet Elise Miller-Hooks

Healthcare systems, school districts, university campuses, government buildings, residential buildings, and business districts are comprised of interdependent buildings that together serve a community function. They rely upon a network of critical lifelines, including water, power, cyber, transportation, and wastewater. A $2.5M National Science Foundation grant (nearly $1.1 million moved to Mason) is aimed at determining how these critical infrastructure-based societal systems (CISSs) withstand and recover from disasters. What the researchers learn from developed complex analysis and modeling techniques will help improve, build, and maintain resilient communities.

Elise Miller-Hooks, the Bill and Eleanor Hazel Endowed Chair in Infrastructure Engineering who joined Mason last year, is the Principal Investigator. Her team is looking specifically at how disasters would impact a healthcare system. What makes this project different from other disaster resilience work, beyond its focus on CISSs, is that it looks at multiple hazard types and incorporates public policy, organizational policy, emergent organizational behaviors and risk communication into a broader quantitative assessment. Areas of study include: how organizational behaviors emerge and evolve as a disaster unfolds and how cyber systems become more vulnerable to follow-on attacks and how to prevent them.

Miller-Hooks brought the collaborative project with her from the University of Maryland. Miller-Hooks worked with PI Judy Mitrani-Reiser at Johns Hopkins who has since moved to NIST. The grant also includes education and outreach aimed at strengthening the pipelines of women in STEM fields. The grant wraps up in August 2018.

Michele McDonald

Getting a virtual handle on extensive data from naval ships and structures

Quantifying resilience of critical infrastructure

Learn About Sustainable Infrastructure

Meet Elise Miller-Hooks