Her research focuses on critical civil infrastructure systems resiliency with focus on transportation combined to a number of topics including: disasters, digital models, interoperability, system of systems, systems thinking, planning, operations planning, economic assessments, resilience assessments, environmental impacts, economic development, policy, human factors in autonomous and connected vehicles, counter human-trafficking in/through transportation, operations technology, information technology, cybersecurity for transportation and environmental applications, homeland security, industrial control systems, operations, decision support systems, decision making, systems development and management, emerging technology, resilience forensics, systems interoperability, infrastructure health monitoring, change management, and innovation. Throughout her professional and academic career, Silvana has worked on a number of research projects mostly focus on: transportation (highways, commercial motor carriers, asset management, applied research, mapping, risk assessment including risk tolerance and risk appetite, nature-based-solutions), improvement of professional skills and training, extreme events and climate adaptation strategies, telecommunications backbone planning, transportation and ITS planning and construction plans reviews, disaster response/ recovery/ mitigation, critical infrastructure protection, counter-human trafficking teaching and research, commercial vehicles federal grants program management at the State level, think tank expert guest as SME together Federal Government Disaster and Critical Infrastructure Protection agencies and groups, modular resilience development plans for governments funded by the World Bank, comprehensive transportation and flooding related research and solutions for local/ state/ national and international governments, and sectorial resilience and sustainability development improvement initiatives and forums.
