Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

The research interests of Dr. Kandil focus on the development of robust IT based decision support systems for sustainable development and maintenance of civil and building infrastructures. The main objective of these systems is to provide expedited optimal/near optimal decisions in all the phases of the life cycle of large scale infrastructure systems.These tools are envisioned to utilize recent developments in computational science and engineering, such as: multi-objective optimization, parallel and distributed computing, and artificial intelligence. The following is a group of past and present projects that Dr. Kandil is involved in.

 

Research Projects

 

1. Distributed Knowledge Discovery in Bridge Health Data (Principal Investigator)

This project was supported by and allocation of 1000 SU hours on the Iowa State University's Alpha Cluster, and had the objectives of: (a) formulating effective data mining algorithms capable of generating knowledge from bridge health monitoring systems; and (b)developing an efficient parallel computing framework analyzing large amounts of bridge structural health data.

 

2. Distributed Multi-Objective Optimization for the Construction of Large Scale Transportation Systems (Research Assistant)

This project was supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER award and had the main objectives of: (a) developing robust multi-objective optimization models capable of minimizing construction cost, duration, while maximizing construction quality and durability; (b) formulating efficient computing frameworks for optimizing large scale projects; and (c) developing dynamic frameworks for revising the optimal plans of projects during their execution.

 

3. Optimizing Large Scale Construction Resource Utilization Problem (Research Assistant)

This project was supported by an allocation of 5,000 SU hours on the 5^th fastest computingcluster in the world, provided by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). This computational time was utilized to investigate the optimization of resource utilization in large scale infrastructure projects. The main objectives of this project were to: (a) investigate the computational requirement for optimizing resource utilization in large scale infrastructure projects; and (b) develop parallel and distributed algorithms capable of efficiently optimizing resource utilization in these projects.

 

4.      ITR: IT-Based Collaboration Framework for Preparing Against, Responding, and Recovering from Disasters Involving Critical Physical Infrastructures (Research Assistant)

This project was suported by the National Science Foundation’s Information Technology Research for National Priorities. The project included team of investigators from a number of disciplines including: civil engineering, computer science, entomology, psychology, communication science, and first responders. The objective of this project was to formulate and validate a conceptual framework that improves collaboration among the parties involved in the relief efforts following a disaster that involves a critical physical infrastructure.

 

5. Evaluation of Lighting and Operations for Nighttime Highway Construction (Research Assistant)  

This project was supported by the Illinois Department of Transportation, and aimed to evaluate the impact of nighttime construction operations on construction cost, quality, safety and productivity. The project also evaluated and recommended design criteria for lighting arrangements for nighttime construction operations.