David Lattanzi's research hopes to develop new methods for integrating and modeling engineering information to improve life-cycle prediction capabilities. Photo by Creative Services.
David Lattanzi, assistant professor of civil, environmental and infrastructure engineering in Mason's Volgenau School of Engineering, is working on a project to make it easier for the people who monitor and analyze data about the performance of naval ships and structures, to understand and act on the information they gather.
Naval vessels, as well as many other engineered systems, must undergo routine surveys throughout their life-cycles to assess their integrity and the need for repairs and retrofits. Through these surveys, a broad range of information is collected. Most of this data is not easily integrated or correlated, and it is typically not structured in a manner that allows for engineering analyses.
The goal of this research is to develop a framework for integrating these sources of data to enable the application of a range of new and advanced data analytics techniques. The concept is to create a living virtual model, or “digital twin,” of a structure that can provide a platform for data fusion and analytics. The result of the program will be new methods for integrating and modeling engineering information to improve life-cycle prediction capabilities.
Lattanzi received $391,000 from the U.S. Department of the Navy for this research. He will be working with two student assistants as part of the project: Sara Mohammadi (a Ph.D. student) and Nicole Nmair (a Master's student). He will begin his work in January 2018 and complete this project in June 2021.