Ji-Eun Byun

Meet Dr Ji-Eun Byun, newly appointed DAFNI Fellow!

Ji-Eun is Assistant Professor in Transport in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Imperial College London (ICL). She will use her Fellowship to develop a resilient Digital Twin for transport networks.

“Through the DAFNI Fellowship, I will develop a framework that uses probability-based modelling to assess the system-level risk of interconnected transport networks — working out how likely the system as a whole is to fail, based on the performance of its individual components. The project will show how the DAFNI platform can bring together different sectors to collaborate on managing risk in the complex networks that society depends on,” Ji-Eun explains.

Dr Byun is one of 10 new DAFNI Fellows, selected from 116 applicants for the nationally competitive programme.

Ji-Eun’s research focuses on risk and resilience assessment of large-scale, complex infrastructure networks under natural and human-made hazard risks, such as motorway networks vulnerable to flooding. Her long-term vision is to develop an integrated Digital Twin (DT) for infrastructure systems. It will connect hazard risk models, component fragility, system performance simulation, and decision metrics.

The DAFNI Fellowship will support Ji-Eun in developing two risk-assessment workflows on the DAFNI platform.

The first workflow will demonstrate an end-to-end infrastructure risk-assessment process using an exploratory model of a highway benchmark network with 129 earthquake-exposed road links, integrating hazard models, component fragilities, system-level accessibility simulations, and decision-oriented risk metrics.

The second will extend this benchmark by integrating two alternative system simulation functions (shortest-path and maximum-flow) to show how different interpretations of system functionality can be embedded and systematically compared within a coherent workflow. This will pioneer a DT environment for evidence-based policy discourse.

She explains, “The workflows will integrate toolkits and infrastructure network databases into DAFNI. Compatibility with the established DAFNI environment will support the continued development of my toolsets, while enabling direct engagement with the DAFNI community, strengthening research impact and training delivery.”

Each DAFNI Fellow has been awarded £10,000 to support staff time, travel, knowledge exchange, conferences, and dissemination activities. The programme also helps Fellows build networks across government, industry and academia through workshops, conferences and wider community engagement.

The workflows will also help promote DAFNI within Ji-Eun’s research network through conferences and research engagement. Integrating DAFNI’s model-connecting capabilities with her Bayesian Network tools will support cross-disciplinary collaboration in support of National Infrastructure Resilience and provide a foundation for future collaborative projects using the DAFNI platform.

Ji-Eun’s research group works on probabilistic and computational methods for reliability, resilience, and risk assessment of complex infrastructure systems under uncertainty. Key research themes include: Bayesian network methodology for high-dimensional systems; system reliability analysis of networked infrastructure; reliability-based optimisation and decision-support; and AI/ML methods for surrogate modelling and inference. Application domains span rail networks, power and energy grids, transport systems, and earthquake disaster risk.