Tech to Protect

FIU — named Florida’s University of Distinction for Environmental Resilience — is helping lead the charge to safeguard our communities, livelihoods and future of our planet.

Researchers don’t only live in America’s ‘ground zero’ for climate-related risks. They’re also at the center of finding innovative, realistic solutions to address those challenges. Collective action and collaboration between ecologists, engineers, architects and other scientists has resulted in scalable, resilience- promoting technologies that monitor and clean up imperiled ecosystems, strengthen critical infrastructure, boost the viability of sustainable power sources and ensure a more resilient world for centuries to come.

Release the Robots

Five decades of nuclear energy research and weapons development — spanning from WWII to the end of the Cold War — left behind a toxic environmental legacy.

Clean up became its own “priority mission,” explains Inés Triay, interim dean of the College of Engineering & Computing and executive director of the Applied Research Center (ARC).

To date, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) has deactivated, decommissioned, decontaminated and deconstructed over 90 sites — many under Triay’s leadership as assistant secretary for DOE-EM. Only 15 remain. According to some estimates, it could take another 90 years to dispose of the rest of the millions of gallons of radioactive bomb-making waste, demolish contaminated buildings and finish remediating soil and groundwater.

FIU scientists are sending in their robotic systems to help DOE with this massive undertaking. No two are alike. All are built to trek into radioactive environments so humans stay out of harm’s way.

Leonel Lagos, principal investigator of the DOE-FIU Cooperative Agreement who oversees the Applied Robotics and Remote Systems Lab, explains each system is designed to be “plug and play,” or meticulously programmed to meet DOE needs.

For instance, Boston Dynamics’s “Spot” — the bright yellow, agile, four-legged robot — can already open doors and bypass obstacles. To take those skills to the next level, ARC researchers retrofitted Spot for inspections and data collection tasks by strapping on sophisticated sensors to measure radiation, as well as high quality LiDAR that uses lasers to 3D map and model large areas.

The ARC team also builds many robots from the ground up. Like one with heavy-duty wheels meant to cart around tools, including drills and cutters, to collect samples and make repairs. Or the “wall crawler” that, as its name suggests, can climb vertically to apply spray coatings to radiologically contaminated surfaces.

Other crawlers — downright miniscule in comparison to their counterparts — squeeze into the tightest of spaces and have already gone underground to check for leaks at the DOE’s Hanford site where buried tanks contain 56 million gallons of radioactive waste.

Robots roam the land and even help manage and monitor coastal ecosystems like Miami’s Biscayne Bay.

When a fish kill happened in August 2020, Todd Crowl — director of the Institute of Environment —quickly assembled a team of marine biologists, ecologists, chemists and computer scientists who deployed buoys and autonomous vessels equipped with special sensors that measure temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll and more.

The data soon painted the full picture of what was happening: Too-hot water temperatures coupled with significant nutrient pollution had caused oxygen levels to plummet.

Fast-forward four years. The bay’s health remains in flux. Fish kills have become a common occurrence. And FIU’s robotics continue to patrol the waters. Any tell-tale signs of trouble and the autonomous vessels are rounded up. They start as prototypes — custom-designed in collaboration with the manufacturers — and are tested out at a Department of Defense-funded tank facility, located at FIU’s Biscayne Bay Campus, before being deployed.

Data scientists like Gregory Murad Reis give them directions to their destinations. An expert in marine robotics, he writes the complex code, or roadmap, that tells the vessels where to go and importantly, how to return with their priceless treasure troves of data. Reis and his computer science students create software technology and visualization tools, like dashboards and color coded maps, to make this important water quality data accessible and easily understandable for policymakers and the public.

Lessons from nature

Architects think a lot about the fate of coastal cities. With rising seas, will they become the next Atlantis? Thomas Spiegelhalter asks a different question. What could be the new standard for climate-resilient architecture? An expert in carbon-neutral energy building and resilient city planning, Spiegelhalter heads up a research group that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to design climate-resilient cities. His team’s innovative concepts include floating buildings, structures elevated on stilts, as well as adaptable hybrids that can be above, on or below the water.

“We’re designing to withstand not only the immediate impacts of hurricanes but also long-term challenges like coastal erosion and rising seas,” says Spiegelhalter.

At first glance, the designs may seem familiar. Deeply rooted in biomimicry, they draw inspiration from the natural world. For example, some of the generative designs use tension and compression structures modeled after the flexibility of trees, allowing buildings to bend and sway in hurricane-force winds without breaking.

“Nature is a great teacher,” agrees Sara Pezeshk. “As architects, we’re usually only designing for people, but if we look at and learn from nature, we can better design for the planet and that’s important for our survival.” 

Pezeshk is the principal investigator of an NSF-funded project that, with a new concept she calls Ecoblox, is transforming existing seawalls into something both beautiful and beneficial to the environment.

Far from ordinary rectangular concrete blocks, Pezeshk’s artful modular system is inspired by coral’s intricate patterns and textures — designed to nurture biodiversity and enhance marine ecosystems. Each delicate fold and crevice is algorithmically shaped using computational codes, integrated with data from scientific journals — for example, the exact crevice sizes oysters prefer for habitat — to script and generate the ideal, most inviting homes for these essential filter-feeder species. Designs are then fabricated using cutting-edge robotic 3D printing to be attached seamlessly to existing seawalls.

Pezeshk points out that future possibilities for Ecoblox are seemingly endless. She’s working on variations that are currently in development, including a SMARTE tile (Sensing and Monitoring for Aquatic Restoration, Tracking, and Evaluation) equipped with sensors that can monitor vital water quality parameters such as salinity, oxygen and pH levels, temperature, as well as other vital data.

Sara Pezeshk and Shahin Vassigh — director of FIU’s Robotics and Digital Fabrication Lab — recently received new support from the EPA to further this work, and soon Ecoblox will be installed at several sites in Biscayne Bay for field testing.

Bolstering Infrastructure

Conventional concrete may be strong. But ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is five times stronger.

“Just applying a shell of UHPC around a structure, like a bridge column, adds to its total strength and makes it almost maintenance free for life,” explains Atorod Azizinamini, director of infrastructure, research and innovation at FIU and a leading bridge engineering expert who holds a patent for this UHPC shell framework concept.

Made with a mix of durable materials like steel fibers and very fine sand (rather than standard aggregate like rocks or gravel) it’s become an ideal candidate for the 40,000+ U.S. bridges and other aging infrastructure in need of repair or maintenance. Another benefit: UHPC is saltwater resistant, making it perfectly suited for coastal structures prone to damaging corrosion.

Azizinamini — along with the team he leads at the USDOT-funded Innovative Bridge Technologies/Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (IBT/ABC-UTC) — currently explores new ways to maximize the advantages of UHPC through additive construction. One technique involves robotic equipment to create site-specific, 3D-printed structural pieces for retrofitting or reinforcement. Another is the use of UHPC in conjunction with pneumatic or “shotcrete” spraying.

With funding from the U.S. Army Corps and IBT/ABC-UTC, Azizinamini developed an open source, cost-effective sprayable UHPC. It has a lower carbon footprint and life cycle cost while reducing application time and labor.

Charging Up

Laptops, smart phones and watches, electric vehicles have all evolved dramatically in the last few decades. The batteries that power them? Not so much. At this point, lithium-ion is decades old technology.

Batteries have essentially become “the bottleneck in technology,” explains Bilal El-Zahab who leads FIU’s Battery Research Laboratory. Cheaper, more powerful, smaller alternatives are needed.

Introduced to ionic materials as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, El-Zahab has spent over a decade working on beyond lithium-ion battery technologies, such as solid-state, lithium- sulfur and lithium-air batteries. Part of this research involves how palladium and platinum can be used as catalysts to improve cycling charge capacity, giving batteries a boost in performance and a longer lifespan.

One resulting innovation is a patented lithium sulfur battery that packs more energy into the same amount of space and weight.

“Instead of using a 1,000-pound EV battery, you could have one that’s 500 pounds and get the same driving range,” El-Zahab says. “Or you could keep the battery the same size, replace it with our cells and get double the range. For example, a Tesla Model 3 gets 320 miles on a full charge, so that could become 640 miles, at least.”

Currently, it’s rigorously being pushed to its limits in a third-party lab — an important step before commercialization.

New energy generation and storage solutions

Battery energy storage systems and renewable energy must “work together hand in hand,” says Daniela Radu, who researches nanomaterials for the next generation of solar cells at FIU. “That’s how you get to energy zero.”

This seamless integration is the goal of the Center of Excellence for Integrated Renewable Energy and Energy Storage. Established with a $10 million investment from the Department of Defense (DoD), FIU leads this multi-year project — that includes collaborators from Pennsylvania State University — to find new energy solutions that support DoD’s strategic commitment to making climate resilience a national security priority.

“If you look at traditional solar panels, the first thing that comes to mind is they’re very heavy,” says Radu, the project’s principal investigator. “Soldiers carry a lot in the field, so imagine having to carry heavy solar panels and batteries on top of it. We’re aiming to create lightweight, foldable, portable alternatives.”

Additionally, the researchers want to incorporate Earth crust elements that are more readily available in the U.S., like copper, while maximizing power conversion efficiency by capitalizing not just on photons in sunlight but any light source, including indoor light bulbs.

All of this will connect to a microgrid. Unlike the traditional power grid that’s interconnected and delivers electricity to many homes or businesses, a microgrid acts independently or in “island” mode — especially important for soldiers often stationed in remote areas.

Grid revolution

Microgrid technology is uniquely capable of protecting the reliability of our energy supply in the wake of extreme weather events such as wildfires and hurricanes.

As part of a decades-long effort to advance renewable energy technologies, FIU — in partnership with Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) — conducts ground-breaking research on the AI-based renewable microgrid installed at the university’s engineering center. The microgrid, installed by FPL in 2020, pairs reliability with clean energy production and leverages an on-site 1.1MW AC solar panel array to generate renewable power, as well as a 9MW/3MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system with the equivalent energy capacity to power over 440 homes for up to three hours.

“This research can help pave the road for providing local and global communities with increased resiliency for riding through extreme weather and power grid events,” says Arif Sarwat, principal investigator of the FIU-FPL microgrid and director of FIU’s Energy, Power and Sustainability-Intelligence research group.

In addition to the solar and battery storage-based microgrid, researchers at FIU leverage the Proactive Analytics and Data Oriented Research on Availability and Security (PANDORAS) Lab, which serves as a virtual distribution system control room and is interconnected to a real-time simulation lab. There, faculty and students in Sarwat’s research group use high-end computer systems to conduct research and simulations using smart grid, weather and telecommunications data.