Katherine Flanigan

About

Katherine Flanigan is an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on climate-resilient environmental systems and technologies, sustainable energy and transportation systems, and intelligent engineered systems and society. Her work involves developing innovative solutions to environmental challenges, emphasizing sustainability and resilience in engineering practices.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Knowledge management
• Computer Security
• Data science
• Engineering
• Artificial Intelligence
• Business
• Systems engineering
• Human–computer interaction
• Structural engineering

Selected publications

• Exploring the Potentials and Challenges of Cyber-Physical-Social Infrastructure Systems for Achieving Human-Centered Objectives

  2023 · 12 citations

  For decades, cyber-physical systems (CPSs) have transformed the design and management of infrastructure systems, improving their performance through the combination of sensing, computing, and control. However, while the existing CPS paradigm supports infrastructure system actuation to achieve desired economic objectives (e.g., efficiency, safety), it fails to account for possible input-output relationships between physical system actuation and human-centered (or “social”) benefits and objectives…

  DOI

• Modeling Human Behavior in Cyber-Physical-Social Infrastructure Systems

  2023 · 12 citations

  The concept of cyber-physical-social infrastructure systems (CPSISs) has been introduced to offer a paradigm shift necessary for including human-centered, or “social,” objectives in traditional cyber-physical systems (CPSs). In this paper we focus on one of the greatest challenges of developing CPSISs: modeling and predicting human behavior. Traditional approaches like rule-based models (e.g., agent-based models) and stochastic methods fall short in capturing the complex, multi-objective, and dy…

  DOI

• Encoding experience: Quantifying multisensory perception of urban form through a systematic review

  Computers Environment and Urban Systems · 2025-09-02 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Bridging the Reality Gap in Digital Twins with Context-Aware, Physics-Guided Deep Learning

  Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering · 2026-01-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Digital twins (DTs) enable powerful predictive analytics, but persistent discrepancies between simulations and real systems—known as the reality gap—undermine their reliability. Coined in robotics, the term now applies to DTs, where discrepancies stem from context mismatches, cross domain interactions, and multiscale dynamics. Among these, context mismatch is pressing and underexplored, as DT accuracy depends on capturing operational context, often only partially observable. However, DTs have a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Comparative Evaluation of Neural Network Architectures for Generalizable Human Spatial Preference Prediction in Unseen Built Environments

  2025-09-09 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  The capacity to predict human spatial preferences within built environments is instrumental for developing Cyber-Physical-Social Infrastructure Systems (CPSIS). A significant challenge in this domain is the generalizability of preference models, particularly their efficacy in predicting preferences within environmental configurations not encountered during training. While deep learning models have shown promise in learning complex spatial and contextual dependencies, it remains unclear which neu…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• J. Moore

  Carnegie Mellon University

  43 shared

• Sarah Christian

  Stanford University

  42 shared

• Fethiye Ozis

  Northern Arizona University

  42 shared

• Gerald Wang

  Cornell University

  42 shared

• Jerome P. Lynch

  Duke University

  17 shared

• Mario Bergés

  Carnegie Mellon University

  10 shared

• Mohammed Ettouney

  6 shared

• Sizhe Ma

  6 shared

Labs

• Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon UniversityPI

Education

• B.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Princeton University

  2014

• Other, Civil Engineering

  University of Michigan

  2016

• Other, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  University of Michigan

  2018

• Ph.D., Civil Engineering Intelligent Systems

  University of Michigan

  2020

Awards & honors

• NSF Graduate Research Fellow
• College of Engineering Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for…
• K&L Gates Presidential Fellowship
• Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship

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