TDAI will host Dr. Sybil Derrible, Associate Professor of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering at University of Illinois Chicago, for a seminar talk on his work. Further information below.
The event will be hybrid.
Abstract
How are infrastructure systems designed? Why do water distribution systems look the way they do? Why do transport systems look the way they do? In this talk, we will first learn about existing infrastructure design trends. In particular, by looking at seven types of infrastructure systems—transport, water, wastewater, electricity, gas, solid waste, and telecommunications—we will see that the trends of the twentieth century led to siloed infrastructure that are unsustainable and vulnerable, and that much too often lead to inequitable living conditions among the residents of a city/region/country. We will also see that infrastructure systems are both interdependent (i.e., they rely on one another to operate) and interrelated (i.e., in the way people consume services provided), and we will use machine learning to capture these interrelationships. We will then learn about new trends that break the current paradigm and that are more decentralized and better integrated. We will conclude with a message to promote creativity both in academia and in infrastructure design.
Bio
Sybil Derrible is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago and the Director of the Complex and Sustainable Urban Networks (CSUN) Laboratory. His research is at the nexus of urban metabolism, infrastructure planning and design, data science, complexity science, environmental justice, and futures studies to redefine how infrastructure is planned, designed, built, and operated. He is the author of the textbook Urban Engineering for Sustainability (MIT Press, 2019). He received an NSF CAREER Award and the Walter L Huber Research Prize for “outstanding research focusing on smart, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure” from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Sybil also serves as an Associate Editor for Scientific Reports (Nature), the Journal of Infrastructure Systems (ASCE), and Cleaner Production Letters (Elsevier), and he is the Chair of AMR10, the Critical Transportation Infrastructure Protection committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB).
