Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing research programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. This award to the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) has potential broader impacts in a number of areas. The goal of the project is to advance the fundamental understanding of robustness as a performance indicator for geotechnical infrastructures and establish an informed decision support framework for robust management of earthen levees against multiple hazards. The research will be integrated into geotechnical engineering courses at UDC.
The project will develop a robust management methodology to address the infrastructure robustness under multiple hazards and advance the state-of-practice in adaptive management of geotechnical infrastructures. The cornerstones of the robust management methodology are three tightly integrated concepts: engineering robustness against multiple hazards, Bayesian inference, and multi-objective based decision-support. Firstly, an original quantitative robustness metric will be formulated for assessing the capability of earthen levees to withstand hazard events such as floods and earthquakes. Then a novel probabilistic framework will be established for robustness and reliability assessment of earthen levees. Finally, an intelligent decision support framework will be created to turn numerical simulation results and performance data into robust management capability. The research is expected to fill a knowledge gap in geotechnical engineering by transforming the robustness concept into an effective decision support tool for geotechnical infrastructure management. The results of the research will lead to an innovative solution for resilient geotechnical infrastructures in the face of uncertainty, which can protect the public and benefit society through safer engineering practice for risk reduction and mitigation.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
