Smart Cities
Smart and Connected Communities: Enhancing Safety, Resilience, and Efficiency
Developing technology and solutions to make urban and rural areas safer, more resilient, and more efficient by utilizing open systems of sensors, software, and effectors to impact across built, natural, mobile, and societal environments.
FEATURED RESEARCH
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Human-Centered Energy Modeling
Arsalan Heydarian, Somayeh Asadi and their Ph.D. students collaborated to develop a multidisciplinary building energy simulation framework that combines detailed building characteristics with dynamic occupant behavior profiles to more accurately predict energy use in complex indoor environments. This research was tested in the Living Link Lab, the approach closely matched actual energy consumption data and outperformed traditional fixed-schedule models, demonstrating the value of incorporating occupant diversity and behavioral variability into energy performance analyses.
PUBLICATION
Human-centered energy modeling: integrating occupant behavior in simulation workflows.
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Data Driven Stormwater Management
Jon Goodall's research on coastal flooding in Virginia provides critical insights that support both community leaders and residents with flooding threats. In a recent study, researchers assessed strategies when expanding traditional stormwater infrastructure is not possible. The results indicate that widespread adoption of small-scale runoff management measures can substantially decrease flood extent, particularly in inland areas affected by rainfall-driven flooding.
PUBLICATION
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Smart Cities Research and Education Grant
The Link Lab has partnered with San Diego State University on a five-year National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) grant to focus on smart construction - Smart Construction, Infrastructure, and Buildings through Education, Research, and Cutting-edge Technology (SCIBER-CT, pronounced “cyber city”). Building on UVA’s expertise in interdisciplinary graduate education, the initiative will prepare 135 master’s students through collaborative coursework, research, and industry partnerships focused on creating safer, smarter, and more sustainable infrastructure.
READ ARTICLE:
UVA and SDSU Launch NSF-Funded Training for Next Generation of Construction Engineering Leaders
Search publications by keyword, author, year, or journal to learn more about the research emerging from the Link Lab.
Faculty Spotlight Video
Explore More Smart Cities Research
SOMAYEH ASADI | NEGIN ALEMAZKOOR
This study developed a simulation framework to evaluate how residential solar panels, battery storage, and grid electricity can be combined to support electric and hydrogen vehicle charging while accounting for household energy use and hourly charging patterns. The findings show that appropriately sized battery storage and optimized energy management strategies can substantially increase household energy independence and reduce carbon emissions, offering guidance for designing more sustainable and cost-effective home energy systems.
PUBLICATION: Integrated sizing and management of residential energy systems for electric and hydrogen vehicle charging.
Haddad, Masoud; Asadi, Somayeh; Alemazkoor, Negin. Journal of Building Engineering, 2025.
This paper presents an edge-computing thermal imaging system that uses a lightweight convolutional neural network to detect and count occupants in buildings in real time, helping improve the efficiency of HVAC and lighting control. The system demonstrated high model performance during training and validation and maintained consistent real-time accuracy in both light and dark environments while preserving privacy by using low-resolution infrared imagery without identifiable facial features.
PUBLICATION: Building occupancy detection using thermal imaging based edge computing.
Francis, Navian; Wood, Ryan P.; Shivarkar, Rutuja; Sun, Ye. Building and Environment, 2026.
This research examines the environmental and infrastructure-related challenges that autonomous vehicles face, including extreme weather, signal interference, inadequate signage, and poor road conditions, all of which can compromise sensing, localization, and navigation capabilities. It evaluates current sensor technologies, fusion methods, and adaptive algorithms, highlighting promising developments such as vehicle-to-infrastructure systems while identifying the need for improved sensor resilience, infrastructure investments, and real-world testing to enhance the reliability of autonomous vehicles.
PUBLICATION: Impact of Critical Situations on Autonomous Vehicles and Strategies for Improvement.
Beigi, Shahriar Austin; Park, Byungkyu Brian, Future Transportation, 2025.
This study explores the use of convolutional neural network (CNN)-based surrogate models within digital twin frameworks to enable faster and more reliable structural health monitoring by replacing computationally intensive finite element simulations. The results demonstrate that enhanced CNN architectures and continuous model updating strategies can improve prediction accuracy, adaptability, and real-time decision-making for infrastructure assessment and management.
Harris, Devin K., Advances in Structural Engineering, 2026.
This study evaluates seven serverless IoT data-layer architectures for smart city applications using a 21-day deployment of nine LoRaWAN sensors, comparing performance, cost, latency, and implementation complexity. The findings identify the most effective architectures for archival, near-real-time, and highly reliable data ingestion, providing practical recommendations to help organizations select solutions that best align with their smart city requirements.
PUBLICATION: Experimental Evaluation of Serverless Data Layer Architectures for Smart City Internet of Things Applications
Sobral, Victor Ariel Leal; Goodall, Jonathan L. Smart Cities, 2026.
Student Testimonial
"Being part of the Link Lab means working in an intellectual and collaborative atmosphere shaped by outstanding faculty and supportive staff. The lab brings together PhD students from a wide range of engineering backgrounds who are all pushing the boundaries of CPS, which creates a real sense of momentum and shared commitment to advancing the field. Having access to a spacious, well-equipped environment—along with regular seminars, research talks, and informal community events—has turned my PhD into not just a rigorous training experience, but a very enjoyable and inspiring one."
Hamidreza Nabaei
PhD Student
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Emerging Engineers Program Gives High School Students Glimpse into Life as an Engineer
Read NowHigh school students tackle real-world problems and explore engineering disciplines through UVA Engineering’s Emerging Engineers program.
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For AI to Advance, We Need Better Ways to Harness Imperfect Data. UVA Engineering’s Yu Meng Could Help.
Read NowUVA’s Yu Meng wins NSF CAREER Award to help AI learn from messy, incomplete data — for better results in everything from accurate hospital records to scientific discovery.
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UVA Engineering Researchers Lead Search for the Next Generation of Powerful Magnet
Read NowFrom cell phones to electric motors, powerful magnets are everywhere. Now, UVA Engineering researchers are searching for a new generation of magnets to power tomorrow’s technology.