PhD student wins paper competition, spot on ASCE institute

By Peter Murphy

The EMI paper competition is an opportunity for students to become more involved at EMI conferences, specifically through increased interaction and training with members of the EMI Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee (FDTC). Snaiki was invited to become a student member of EMI FDTC as part of his award in the paper competition.

Snaiki’s paper summarizes the knowledge-enhanced deep learning (KEDL) he developed in order to simulate idealized storm surges. According to Snaiki, the trained KEDL can accurately predict the water levels of oceans, seas and lakes during a storm surge.

“Hurricanes are well known to be responsible for a substantial part of natural hazard-induced economic and life losses though high winds, torrential rain and storm surge,” Snaiki says. “We have enough data on storm surge for the KEDL, as only a small number of training datasets are need to complete this.”

The EMI FDTC is a committee affiliated with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Snaiki presented three papers with his faculty advisor Teng Wu at the 2019 EMI Conference; Knowledge-Enhanced Deep Learning for Simulation of Tropical Cyclone Boundary-Layer Winds, Risk Assessment of Tropical Cyclones Under Changing Climate: Wind and Rain Hazards, and A Knowledge-Enhanced Deep Learning for Simulation of Idealized Storm Surge. Snaiki won the EMI FDTC student paper competition with his final paper.

EMI is one of the American Society of Civil Engineer’s (ASCE) discipline-specific institutes. This technical group is an interdisciplinary organization of engineering mechanics promoting research to address current and emerging societal and engineering issues.