Towards an adaptive infrastructure system decision support model
Start date
January 2022End date
July 2022Overview
For some infrastructure assets, maintenance practice has evolved from a reactive response at the point of failure to data-centred predictive and preventative measures. This is partially due to costly (societal and economic) consequences of unplanned maintenance but also embracing new capabilities in value generation through data exploitation. With climate change-induced shifts in load and environmental conditions, there is an increasing need to evolve risk and failure mitigation activities and adaptive strategies through effective telemetry and monitoring. In this project and through a series of engagement activities, we have brought together a cohort of established national and international participants and collaborators to investigate the (R)evolution of maintenance and management practices in transport infrastructure and their effect on reliability, safety, and efficiency.
Funder
Lloyd Register Foundation under Small Grant Scheme
Team
Principal investigators
Professor John Beckford
Principal investigator
Dr Donya Hajializadeh
Associate Professor of Structural Engineering
Biography
Dr Donya Hajializadeh, BEng (Hons), MEng, PhD, CEng MICE, MIEI, EUR ING, FHEA is a Chartered Engineer, European Engineer, and Associate Professor of Bridge/Structural Engineering at the University of Surrey, School of Engineering.
Donya is a Fellow of the Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence (AI), CEE Director of Employability and Deputy coordinator of Surrey/ICE Scholarship.
She was a recipient of the prestigious Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher Scholarship awarded by the European Commission for the duration of her PhD at the University College Dublin (UCD). Following completing her PhD, she spent 3 years in the industry as a research engineer at Roughan & O’Donovan Innovative Solutions (RODIS) and as an associate lecturer (part-time) at UCD Civil Engineering School. Subsequently, she was appointed Senior Lecturer in Civil/Structural Engineering at Anglia Ruskin University for 3 years prior to joining the University of Surrey.
Donya is an active member of several professional bodies, including the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE), the Institution of Engineers of Ireland (IEI), the European Federation of National Engineers Associations (FEANI) and the Women’s Engineering Society (WES).
Donya’s Research Interests with the industry-focused application:
- Structural health monitoring (SHM)
- Data-driven-based SHM
- Machine learning-based asset management systems
- Deep learning-based damage identification systems
- Bridge Weigh-in-Motion (WIM)
- Bridge traffic load modelling
- Advanced finite element analysis (FEA)
- Risk and reliability assessment of bridges
- Infrastructure interdependencies’ modelling
- Resilience, vulnerability and risk assessment of critical infrastructure
Donya is keen to supervise and support outstanding candidates who wish to pursue their studies at the PhD level in any of the above research areas or related fields. To discuss PhD research topics, funding opportunities and the application process, please contact Donya directly by email: d.hajializadeh@surrey.ac.uk
Co-investigators
Dr Boulent Imam
Associate Professor (Reader) in Civil Engineering
Biography
Dr Boulent Imam graduated with an Honours BSc degree from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. He obtained his MSc in Structural Engineering with Distinction from the University of Surrey in 2002. His MSc dissertation was on the probabilistic fracture assessment of the Northridge moment resisting connections and led to the publication of two papers. Dr Imam continued his studies at the same university where he successfully defended his PhD in June 2006. Dr Imam's PhD work focused on the fatigue analysis of riveted railway bridges and was funded by EPSRC and Network Rail. He developed a general methodology for the fatigue assessment of riveted railway bridges, through finite element (FE) analysis, by concentrating on the fatigue behaviour of railbearer-to-cross-girder connections. Following his PhD, Dr Imam continued his research as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Surrey expanding his experience in load modelling by investigating the effect of future railway loading evolution scenarios on the remaining life of riveted railway bridges. Parallel to this study, he also investigated, as a continuation of his PhD work, the application of novel assessment methods (Theory of Critical Distances) for more reliable remaining fatigue life estimation of riveted bridge connections.
In November 2007, Dr Imam was appointed as a Lecturer in Civil Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences in the University of Surrey. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2013 and to Associate Professor (Reader) in 2022. His expertise spans asset management, structural assessment, load modelling, and the risk and reliability assessment of transport infrastructure, with a particular focus on the performance and maintenance of bridges under varying environmental and operational conditions.
Dr Imam is the founding director of the MSc programme in Infrastructure Engineering and Management which specialises postgraduate students on system-of-systems approach for the planning, delivery, operation and decommissioning of infrastructure systems. He has also been the MSc programmes coordinator of multiple MSc programmes at University of Surrey, including the only postgraduate programme in Bridge Engineering in Europe (MSc Bridge Engineering). He has led internal validation and external accreditations of MSc programmes as has acted as the Distance-Learning manager of our online MSc programmes in the past. He is currently external examiner for MSc programmes in two UK Universities.
Dr Imam has been actively disseminating his research contributions in major international and national conferences, including invited Keynote Lectures, growing his international reputation in infrastructure asset management. He has been member of the scientific committee of major international conferences and has organised a number of special sessions. He is in the Editorial Board of high-profile journals and has been active reviewer for a wide range of journals. Dr Imam has successfully supervised over 20 PhD students and post-doctoral researchers and has been invited as external examiner for PhD vivas across the world.
Dr Sotiris Moschoyiannis
Reader in Complex Systems
Biography
I am a mathematician (Maths, University of Patras) doing research in computer science (PhD in Theoretical Computer Science, University of Surrey). My work on Learning and Control in complex networks focuses on when and where to intervene in a network in order to steer to a desirable outcome. I am keen on mathematical methods (control theory, approximations methods) combined with computational methods such as Reinforcement Learning (rule-based, deep).
I am a member of the executive committee of the IEEE Technical Committee on Cloud Computing and the technical committee on IEEE Industrial Informatics.
On the Programme Committee for the annual conference on Complex Networks, the IEEE Service Oriented Computing and Applications (IEEE SOCA), and RuleML+RR (co-Chair in 2020) and the International Rule Challenge (Chair in 2019) for the past 10 years or so.
An IEEE Member (No. 41465193).
Dr Raffaella Guida
Reader in Satellite Remote Sensing
Biography
Raffaella is an Associate Professor in Satellite Remote Sensing at the Surrey Space Centre (SSC), University of Surrey. For SSC she is also covering the roles of centre Deputy Director and local PostGraduate Research Director.
She received the Laurea degree (cum laude) in Telecommunications Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II (Naples, Italy), in 2003 and 2007, respectively. In 2006, she received a two-year research grant from the University of Naples Federico II to be spent at the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering on the topic of electromagnetic field propagation in urban environment. In 2006, she was also a Guest Scientist with the Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Technische Universität München (Munich, Germany). In 2008, Raffaella joined the Surrey Space Centre as academic.
Raffaella has published more than 130 papers and was awarded the IEEE J-STARS Best Paper Award 2013 for her research on statistical analysis of SAR data. In 2022 she received the UNDP Ocean Innovation Challenge Award for the satellite-based Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) tool NEREUS.
Since 2023, she is the elected Chair for the UK & Ireland Chapter of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS). In 2025 she was approved by the UNDP Vetting Committee becoming an international expert in remote sensing in the UNDP Roster.
Additional team members
Outputs
Workshop recordings
Provocation Talks - the whats, the hows and the whys in asset management practice.
Provocation Talks - evolution of infrastructure-related data-streams.
Provocation Talks - multi-faceted decision-making.
Provocation Talks - innovation pathways for predictive and adaptive asset management.