An Intelligent Optimization System for Maritime Infrastructure Asset Management: Navigation Channel Dredging and Dredged Material Management
Navigation channels are critical maritime infrastructure that supports economic and recreational activities and intermodal freight supply chains, impacting broad areas of the hinterland. This presentation addresses a data-driven, optimization-based navigation channel maintenance dredging and dredged material management system, considering a set of engineering and economic factors such as including channel linkage and dependency, channel bundling, confined disposal facilities accessibility and capacity, shoaling and navigability deterioration over time, reimbursable costs, channel economic values, etc. A heuristic algorithm called the dynamic planning prioritization algorithm is proposed to efficiently solve this type of complex asset management problem at a large scale. The research introduced in this talk has been implemented into a web-based Maritime Asset Management System (MAMS) software for the New Jersey Department of Transportation for prioritizing their resource allocations to improve critical transportation infrastructure systems.
Dr. Yun Bai is currently an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT), a USDOT-designated University Transportation Center (UTC) at Rutgers University. At CAIT, Dr. Bai develops and leads the research program of transportation infrastructure asset management. Her expertise lies in transportation systems modeling that applies state-of-the-art operations research, data analytics, and management science methodologies to solve infrastructure and transportation engineering problems. Her recent research focuses on methodology framework development for pavement, bridge, transit, and maritime asset management, such as infrastructure deterioration modeling, life cycle cost modeling, capital planning, as well as risk and resilience management. She is specialized in mathematical modeling and algorithm design for solving complex optimization problems. She is also experienced in developing data management platforms and decision support tools. Dr. Bai obtained her B.S. from Zhejiang University, China, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At UIUC, Dr. Bai has also worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Industrial Engineering to study transportation-related game-theoretic models. She had one year of industrial experience working as an operations analyst in the Information Analytics Division at Caterpillar Inc. where she developed mathematical algorithms and proprietary software tools for the company to address its supply chain management issues.