UTC Research Team Earns Invitation To National Conference

  • Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Dr. Ignatius Fomunung was the principal investigator on a multidisciplinary grant that received a High Value Research award from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
Dr. Ignatius Fomunung was the principal investigator on a multidisciplinary grant that received a High Value Research award from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
photo by Angela Foster/UTC
A UTC civil engineering professor is spending this week at a national conference in Washington, D.C., thanks to his leadership in tackling one of transportation planning’s most persistent challenges.

Professor Ignatius Fomunung, the director of UTC’s Center for Energy, Transportation and the Environment, was the principal investigator on a multidisciplinary grant funded by the Tennessee Department of Transportation titled “A Framework for Quantitative Assessment of the Environmental, Social and Economic Benefits of TDOT Infrastructure Projects.”

The TDOT-sponsored project, executed from 2021 to 2023 for approximately $280,000, was one of only 30 projects nationwide to receive a High Value Research-2024 award from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
Prof. Fomunung is presenting the team’s work at the Transportation Research Board’s 104th Annual Conference—hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine—in Washington, D.C.

“It’s very rewarding because it’s a recognition that the effort we put here was worthwhile—and it’s a collective effort. It also speaks to the benefit of having a multidisciplinary team working together on a project,” said Prof. Fomunung, a member of the UTC faculty since 2005.

Along with Prof. Fomunung, the eight-member UTC faculty and student project team consisted of:
• Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering Jejal Bathi;
• UC Foundation Professor 0f Civil Engineering Mbakisya Onyango;
• Professor of Computer Science Yu Liang;
• UC Foundation Professor of Environmental Science Thomas Wilson;
• Graduate student Hasan Sabbir, recipient of a master’s degree in civil engineering in 2023 and now working for the California Department of Transportation;
• Undergraduate student Carmen Harvey, who received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 2022 and is now a city of Chattanooga transportation engineering manager; and
• Undergraduate student Dakila Ledesma, who earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2021.

Prof. Fomunung said the project developed a framework to help transportation planners better assess the value of infrastructure projects by incorporating economic, environmental and social factors—known as the “triple bottom line.”

The team set out to address a critical issue in infrastructure planning. Traditionally, decisions about roads, bridges and other public works have focused heavily on economic considerations—primarily because environmental and social impacts are more difficult to quantify. Prof. Fomunung and the team developed a system that incorporates all three elements; the resulting framework provides a comprehensive and objective cost-benefit tool that aids designers in selecting an optimal project type among several competing alternatives.

“The traditional way of making decisions about infrastructure projects often focused on economic factors alone because environmental and social benefits are harder to quantify,” Prof. Fomunung said. “This framework provides a comprehensive way to factor those in, leading to more balanced and impactful decisions.”

Beyond its technical achievements, the project has broader implications for transportation planning nationwide. Prof. Fomunung said that the Federal Highway Administration recognized early on the potential for the system to be adopted in other states, making it a model for addressing infrastructure challenges across the country.

“The goal was not just to solve TDOT’s problem but to create a framework that other states could adopt, taking into account geographic and temporal variations in infrastructure needs,” he said. “Even within the state of Tennessee, the approaches that will work in Chattanooga may not work in Memphis. Likewise, approaches that may look attractive today might be different than 10 years ago or 10 years from now. This temporal and spatial variation added another level of complexity to the task, but which we resolved.”
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