Funding source: US DOT

Contract number: 69A3551747109

Funding amount: $27,323

Performance period: 8/1/2021 to 8/31/2022

Transportation infrastructure deterioration and its impact on lifetime structural performance are the foremost concerns of the USDOT. The structural damage due to physical or chemical causes weakens transportation infrastructures; consequently, the degrading infrastructures are getting more susceptible to various natural hazards and disasters, including coastal hazards (e.g., erosion, storms, sea-level rise). To improve resilience of such weakening transportation infrastructures, accurate estimations of structural performance under an extreme event and possible performance degradation induced by reported damages from routine infrastructure inspection are required. Also, for proper maintenance and operation of the transportation infrastructure, information about how overall infrastructure performance would be affected by the detected damages should be readily available for decision-makers and stakeholders. Thus, there is a strong need to develop an advanced and interactive hazard risk management framework for transportation infrastructures where users can easily check the location of meaningful damages, their effects on infrastructure vulnerability, and expected economic and life losses caused by a certain hazard. The goal of the proposed research project is to develop an integrated hazard vulnerability assessment and mitigation framework for transportation infrastructures with progressive vulnerability evaluation and mixed reality (MR). The MR technology will help decision-makers better and easily understand the results from the complex structural performance assessment. The proposed framework will enable engineers to manage damage and degradation propagation over time, to mitigate hazard risk, to estimate transportation infrastructure lifetime, and to optimize maintenance time and cost.