Over a trillion dollars is invested in the nation's mostly aging infrastructure through various bonds and public funds. Most of that is spent on new construction and replacement of old infrastructure. It can be convincingly argued that it would be more cost effective over the long term to spend a good portion of these investments in taking a proactive course in managing the maintenance processes of the infrastructure rather than waiting and being forced to merely reacting to disruptive incidences.

A physical attack planned by terrorists to the U.S. includes complex strategic behaviors of terrorists because they may intend to cross any U.S. border. At the same time, a defensive entity should consider the complex process that may cause catastrophic results once it would happen. This strategic game situation is much clearer for the case of cyber-terror attacks. For example, if cyber terrorists are able to successfully invade one of the U.S.

Developing transportation infrastructure without compromising environmental quality is of paramount importance. This can also lead to improvement in the US economic competitiveness, which is intimately linked to modern transportation systems. However, developing such system in a sustainable way is not trivial. The proposed paper will explore a topic of self-cleaning and air purifying structural components, which can save energy via reducing of surface contamination (e.g.

Executive Summary

This project develops a framework for qualitative and quantitative analysis of urban region resilience based on identification and exercise of system metrics pertinent across infrastructure sectors and over geography and time. Complex system response following stress application (human- or nature-induced) will be assessed through study of performance response functions with a focus on the New York/New Jersey region.

Comprehensive studies by the New York City Department of Environmental Conservation have shown that major air pollutants, including fine particles (PM2.5), elemental/black carbon (EC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and ozone (O3) vary more than 200% across New York City. These roadside studies show that higher concentrations occur in areas where fuel combustion sources, especially emissions from buildings and on-road vehicles, are more abundant.

The Transportation Research Board (2009) identified the shortage of investment in human and intellectual capital as one of top nine critical issues in transportation. Women and minorities are underrepresented in the Transportation Engineering national workforce and Civil Engineering graduates are composed of less than 15 percent females and less than 10 percent minority students (Ivey et al., 2012). It has been suggested to promote careers in Transportation Engineering to students in K-12 grades to increase the attraction of future professionals (Martin, 2001).

Peer reviewed publications:

The objective of this research is to develop a systematic methodology to understand overall demand, destination type choice, and route choice decisions in the aftermath of a hurricane. It will consider both transportation and social and other relevant factors such as actions of agencies dealing with emergency operations. Original data from past hurricanes will be used to estimate and calibrate the models, as well as new traffic data from Hurricane Irene in 2011.

Executive Summary