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Elise Miller-Hooks

Professor & Hazel Chair in Infrastructure Engineering

George Mason University

http://civil.gmu.edu/miller



Optimal investment for a resilient global port network

Ports are critical components of the global supply chain, providing key connections between land- and maritime-based transport​ modes. They operate in cooperative, but competitive, co-opetitive, environments wherein the throughput of individual ports is linked through an underlying transshipment network. The ports, as well as supporting rail and roadway system infrastructures, however, are by the nature of their designs and locations inherently vulnerable to rising sea levels, significant precipitation events, storm surges and consequent coastal flooding. They are also subject to worker strikes as well as other disruptive events of natural or anthropogenic causes. Investments, thus, are needed to protect this intermodal (IM) system from such disruptive forces. This presentation proposes optimization and equilibrium techniques for developing multi-stakeholder, protective investment strategies aimed at enhancing resilience of this marine-based IM system to disruption while protecting the market share of individual ports. These techniques account for the existence of differing stakeholders, varying governing principles and variations in investment sources.

 

About the speaker

Professor Elise Miller-Hooks

Dr. Elise Miller-Hooks holds the Bill and Eleanor Hazel Endowed Chair in Infrastructure Engineering in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at George Mason University. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Miller-Hooks served as Program Director (2014-2016) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Civil Infrastructure Systems Program in the Engineering Directorate, lead Program Officer for the Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes (CRISP) solicitation, and a cognizant program officer on her division's Smart and Connected Communities (i.e. Smart Cities) initiative. She has also served on the faculties of the University of Maryland, Pennsylvania State University and Duke University. Dr. Miller-Hooks received her Ph.D. (1997) and M.S. (1994) degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas – Austin and B.S. in Civil Engineering from Lafayette College (1992). She is an adjunct professor in Structural Engineering at Ben Gurion University. Her expertise is in: mathematical modeling and optimization for transportation systems; multi-hazard civil infrastructure resilience quantification; emergency/disaster planning and response; intermodal passenger and freight transport; real-time routing and fleet management; paratransit, ridesharing and bikeways; stochastic and dynamic network algorithms; and collaborative and multi-objective decision-making. Dr. Miller-Hooks serves on the editorial boards of Transportation Science (Associate Editor), Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems and Transportation Research Part B, and is Chair of the TRB Transportation Network Modeling Committee, founding Co-Chair of the TRB Task Force on Emergency Evacuation, and past president of the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Transportation Science and Logistics Society (TSL) and the Women in OR/MS Forum (WORMS).​