Abstract: Aging and unforeseen events cause civil infrastructure to deteriorate during service life. Accurate understanding of risks due to the deterioration and how the risks evolve over time is essential to making informed decisions for sustainable operation and maintenance. To this end, acquiring critical in-situ data that depicts accurately how structures deteriorate at both local and global scales becomes imperative. This presentation explores recent development in structural health monitoring, inspection, and control using both traditional and emerging sensing techniques for buildings, high-mast illumination poles (HMIP), bridges, and concrete dams.  Key topics include optimal virtual sensing strategies for dynamic systems in the absence of input information, field monitoring to unveil wind-induced vibration mechanisms in HMIPs and mitigation strategies, and wireless skin sensor network for continuous fatigue crack monitoring. In addition, a variety of advanced computer vision, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality techniques will be presented for inspection of steel bridges and concrete dams.  These developed monitoring and control methodologies play an important role in effective risk management and mitigation of critical infrastructures.

Short Bio: Dr. Jian Li is the Francis M. Thomas Chair’s Council Associate Professor and Dean R. and Florence W. Frisbie Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Kansas, where he also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.  He received Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and M.S. and B.S. from Harbin Institute of Technology. His research focuses on both theoretical and experimental developments of advanced sensing and structural health monitoring techniques to improve the resiliency and sustainability of civil infrastructures under operational and extreme loading conditions. Dr. Li was awarded the Takuji Kobori Prize by IASCM - International Association for Structural Control and Monitoring, the Rising Stars in Structural Engineering from the Civil + Structural Engineer Magazine, and the Miller Professional Service Award for Distinguished Research from KU School of Engineering. He holds three US patents, has over 150 publications, and has served as PI or Co-PI on research projects worth over $10 million. Dr. Li is the current vice chair of the ASCE Structural Health Monitoring & Control Committee and the secretary of the US-China Earthquake Engineering Foundation. He also serves as an associate editor and editorial board members of several international journals such as Frontiers in Built Environment, Engineering Structures, Smart Structures and Systems, Journal of Building Structures, etc.