Dr. Dulcy M. Abraham, Engineering Professor at Purdue University, will speak as part of the School of Building Construction's Lecture Series April 14.

Her talk, entitled, "Addressing the Infrastructure Gap: Using System-of-Systems Approaches to Examine Stakeholder Impact", will be held at 6 p.m. April 14 in the  Klaus Advanced Computing Building, Room 1116-East. The lecture is free and open to the public.

The national investment in the US civil infrastructure sector is more than 400 billion per year, of which about $60 billion is funded by the federal government. However, many of these infrastructure systems are eroding due to aging, excessive demand, misuse, exposure, mismanagement and neglect. Historically, infrastructure rehabilitation has been prompted primarily by repairing failures rather than preventing them, and rehabilitation programs have applied traditional materials and processes, used traditional funding mechanisms and addressed immediate rather than long-term needs.  The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the U.S. currently invests only about half of what is needed to bring the nation’s infrastructure up to a good condition – leading to a widening gap between infrastructure needs and current spending.

Innovative financing has emerged to complement traditional financing structures in closing the gap. To assist policy makers in evaluating innovative financing alternatives, agent-based modeling is examined to capture the impact of activities and institutions of the stakeholders at a micro level as well as the determinants of financial innovation at a macro level. Evaluation of innovative financing alternatives is performed using a real-option model and the impact of variability in decision-making, and uncertainties in cash flows and cost of capital are analyzed.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Dulcy M. Abraham received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1990. She is a Professor with the School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Since Fall 2010, she has also been serving as the Global Initiative Coordinator in the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS). Her current research, teaching and engagement interests include infrastructure assessment and rehabilitation, value-added delivery of capital-intensive projects, innovative financing for infrastructure projects, mitigation and post-disaster recovery planning, construction safety and global issues in engineering and construction.

Dr. Abraham served on the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Construction Research Council (CRC) Executive Committee from 2005-2008 as secretary, vice-chair and chair. Other national committee assignments include the ASCE Committee on Construction Equipment and Techniques Committee, the ASCE Water Infrastructure Security Enhancements (WISE) Committee, the ASTM Committee on Technology and Underground Utilities, and the WERF (Water Environment Research Foundation) Project Committee on the Examination of Innovative Methods Used in the Inspection of Wastewater Collection Systems. In 2008, she received the Leadership Award from the College of Engineering Purdue University for excellence in faculty leadership that promotes a culture of improving the climate and environment for other faculty, staff, and in the College of Engineering. In 2011-2012, she will be serving as a Community of Service Learning Faculty Fellow at Purdue University.