KENNESAW, Ga. | Aug 29, 2025

Every day, Georgia motorists travel more than 125,000 miles of roadways to reach vacation destinations, commute to work, or haul payloads in support of the state’s bustling economy.

Some traverse the nearly 15,000 bridges spanning the state’s waterways and valleys with little regard for the integrity of structures upon which they rely. However, those with insight into the maintenance behind these engineering feats understand much work is required to fortify the most critical pieces of Georgia’s infrastructure.

Despite ranking among the best states for infrastructure health, Georgia is given a meager C+ grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which cites general signs of deterioration that require attention to mitigate catastrophe. Beyond the health and safety implications of faltering infrastructure, there are economic and environmental concerns that can be addressed through ingenuity.

Poised to answer the call are Kennesaw State University researchers who, equipped with external grants, are solving Georgia’s most pressing transportation problems, said Sunanda Dissanayake, chair of KSU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“Think about how much time motorists sit in traffic each day,” said Dissanayake, who also serves as director of the Georgia Pavement and Traffic Research Center. “Consider, too, the emissions produced by those idling cars, and the loss of life that could have been prevented by safer infrastructure. These are the critical issues our faculty are addressing every day through their research and collaboration.”

Safeguarding Georgia’s infrastructure

Housed in KSU’s Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, the Georgia Pavement and Traffic Research Center is composed of 14 faculty researchers representing three colleges, including the College of Computing and Software Engineering and the College of Science and Mathematics. Its mission is to improve the safety, mobility, and productivity of transportation through cutting-edge research.

Through the center, KSU faculty and external collaborators advance transportation systems with projects funded by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense, and other organizations. These projects address different aspects of transportation from infrastructure and emissions to health and safety.

Since 2013, GDOT has funded nearly 20 projects at KSU, many of them involving civil engineering professor Tien Yee. Recent projects involving Yee have ranged from training environmental health specialists, to measuring the impact of daytime light in tunnels.

Yee serves as the principal investigator on a GDOT-funded project that uses cost-effective electronic devices to remotely monitor scouring on bridge piers in the Atlanta area. A bridge scour occurs when flowing water dislodges sediment surrounding bridge foundations, weakening the overall structure.

“This is a natural process, and it’s very difficult to monitor since it happens below the surface,” Yee said. “Monitoring is merely a preventive measure, but it helps us better assess the condition of the bridge and act before its structural integrity is determined to be at risk. Ultimately, it has the potential to save lives by allowing us to intervene before disaster strikes.”

By mounting two small electronic devices to bridge piers, Yee and his collaborators – Mahyar Amirgholy, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Metin Oguzmert, professor of civil engineering – hope to improve the way GDOT assesses scouring following heavy rain and flooding. Traditionally, crews manually inspect bridges following inclement weather, but Yee said the approach has been proven inaccurate.

“The scour will always be the worst at the time of the storm, but teams often don’t arrive on the scene until the sediment has resettled, giving an inaccurate measure of the scour,” Yee said. “Our device will allow engineers to measure the scour in real time, reducing the turnaround to repair at-risk bridges.”

His device is currently installed on a bridge in Carrollton, Georgia, serving as the test case in its potential use statewide.

While Yee’s research centers around water, associate professor of civil engineering Mohammad Jonaidi’s is exploring how another element – fire – impacts bridge longevity. In another GDOT-funded project, Jonaidi is developing a set of guidelines for assessing the impact of fire on bridge structures, helping future engineers better determine when bridges are safe to operate, require repairs, or need to be replaced.

Bridge fires are not uncommon, but the issue was thrust into the national spotlight in 2017 when a section of Interstate 85 in Atlanta collapsed following an intense fire, resulting in a multi-million-dollar economic impact. While collapses are considered an extreme outcome of a bridge fire, many bridges suffer fire damage while remaining intact. Following a fire, engineers must quickly assess the damage and determine if the bridge is safe to cross, Jonaidi said.

“What happens if only two lanes of the bridge are impacted by the fire?” Jonaidi asked. “What kind of effect does that have on the neighboring lanes? Is the bridge still safe to operate or does it need to be closed until repairs can be conducted? These are the types of questions we are going to address with our guidelines for the Georgia Department of Transportation.”

The future of transportation

Kennesaw State researchers aren’t just exploring the structural needs of roads; they’re also interested in addressing the logistical needs of the area’s heavy traffic volume. ASCE ranks Atlanta among the 10 worst cities for traffic congestion, and motorists spend as much as 65 hours each year idling on Atlanta roads, according to the INRIX 2024 Global Traffic Scorecard.

To improve traffic, Amirgholy and a team of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students in KSU’s Futra Lab are reimagining traffic modeling and control, and infrastructure planning to reduce congestion, energy consumption, and emissions. His projects leverage artificial intelligence to analyze traffic dynamics, enable cooperative control of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), and predict energy consumption and emissions across a range of vehicle classes, including electric vehicles.

“The standard mode of thinking is that we can simply add more lanes to reduce traffic congestion, but that’s only a bandage for a much larger problem,” Amirgholy said. “Artificial intelligence has great potential for transforming traffic analysis and designing effective traffic control and management strategies aimed at reducing congestion, improving energy efficiency, and promoting public health.”

The Futra Lab is also developing a decentralized cloud-based control system for CAVs to coordinate with each other and traffic lights to reduce congestion, fuel use, and emissions, and enable smoother traffic flow by synchronizing speeds and minimizing idling at intersections. Amirgholy is also working with the Atlanta Regional Commission, an intergovernmental planning agency, to develop the Atlanta Energy and Emission Modeling and Analysis Tool (AEEMAT).

“I’m very optimistic about this project, which has the potential to have a positive outcome on Atlanta and the region as a whole,” he said.

Like Amirgholy’s CAV research, assistant professor of computer engineering Billy Kihei is exploring vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology, which promises to help make roads safer and greener. V2X technology uses radio frequencies to allow cars to communicate with pedestrians, traffic lights, and other vehicles. Kihei's lab is seeking to use the signals like a radar, which could be key in preventing rear-end collisions with vehicles not yet equipped with similar radio technology.

“In our research, we’re trying to study the signal these radios are broadcasting to each other in hopes we can physically sense objects in the world around them,” Kihei said. “About 40,000 American lives are lost on the roadways each year, and this technology could address up to 80% of non-impaired accidents.”

Kihei has served as principal investigator on NSF-sponsored projects and has collaborated with the Curiosity Lab in nearby Peachtree Corners, Georgia, often involving students in his research along the way. His labs engage students ranging from undergraduates up to Ph.D. students, many of whom co-author papers alongside faculty members before graduating.

The students share a common thread in that they all seek meaningful projects that can better the lives of Georgians, Kihei said.

“It’s very easy to get students motivated to work in this space because they know it’s about saving lives and using the transportation system as a way to uplift the public good,” he said.

– Story by Travis Highfield

Photo by Judith Pishnery

 

A leader in innovative teaching and learning, Kennesaw State University offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees to its more than 47,000 students. Kennesaw State is a member of the University System of Georgia with 11 academic colleges. The university’s vibrant campus culture, diverse population, strong global ties, and entrepreneurial spirit draw students from throughout the country and the world. Kennesaw State is a Carnegie-designated doctoral research institution (R2), placing it among an elite group of only 8 percent of U.S. colleges and universities with an R1 or R2 status. For more information, visit kennesaw.edu.