Failure of Infrastructure Systems: A Multilevel Network Analysis of Decision-Making and Influential Behavioral Constructs Tamima Elbashbishy, Radwa Eissa, Islam H. El-adaway, Jeffrey S. Russell Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 2026 High-profile failures of infrastructure systems are often attributed to design flaws. However, these incidents can also stem from a broader set of interconnected decisions made by stakeholders involved in the planning, management, and operation of these systems. While ethical guidelines and professional codes are designed to prevent such failures, cognitive biases may undermine adherence. Previous research efforts, primarily focused on ethical violations using case studies, have overlooked how behavioral ethics constructs and professional conduct could drive these breaches. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by (1) conducting an analysis of three system failure cases at the micro, meso, and macro levels to identify key decisions made by primary stakeholders; (2) overlaying these decisions with violations of the ASCE Code of Ethics as well as the known behavioral constructs that triggered ethical breaches; (3) providing quantitative metrics to assess the impact and extent of these decisions on project failure; and (4) constructing visual graph networks to reveal critical patterns of behavioral constructs and code violations. Results showed that conformity, slippery slope, and overconfidence biases negatively influenced decision-making, while the moving spotlight effect had a positive influence. These behavioral constructs formed a self-reinforcing cycle of unethical decisions that explicitly emphasized the need for targeted interventions. As such, ethical risk factors were identified as early warning signs to proactively mitigate unethical decision-making. Moreover, several recommendations were proposed including educating professionals and students about the impact of behavioral biases and implementing organizational reforms that promote transparency, accountability, and diverse perspectives. Through addressing these behavioral patterns, this study offers actionable strategies for professionals, policymakers, and educators to mitigate unethical decision-making and hopefully prevent future infrastructure system failures.
Managing and Accelerating the Circular Economy Transitions within the Construction Value Chain Using Network Governance and Game Theory Systems Perspectives Radwa Eissa, Islam H. El-adaway Journal of Management in Engineering, 2026 The fragmented nature of the construction industry has hindered its transition toward circular economy (CE) practices. While game theory (GT) has been successfully applied to support the strategic decisions of CE transitions in other sectors, CE-GT models in the construction domain remain extremely limited. This paper addresses two research questions: (1) how are CE network governance activities currently modeled using GT across domains? (2) How can such models be transferred and adapted to solve strategic interactions within the construction value chain in a manner that enables CE practices to emerge as equilibrium outcomes? These questions are driven by the need to reorganize the construction value chain’s decision-making environment to better align with CE principles. To answer these questions, the paper adopts a mixed-methods approach combining deductive content analysis with network analysis. Findings show that market creation games, primarily based on Stackelberg models, are most common and are used for CE pricing mechanisms and profit determination. Evolutionary games follow in frequency, typically applied to evaluate macroscale policies and sociocultural changes. Despite the diversity of models identified, most have been developed for manufacturing-oriented value chains, revealing a need for adaptations to reflect the unique characteristics of the construction sector, such as project-based operations, immobility, uncertain demand, fragmentation, and assembly processes. Several gaps were identified, including the need for modeling workforce education, skill development, and improved integration of policy formulation and implementation in CE transitions. Alongside the proposed adaptations to GT models for the construction sector, future research recommendations include incorporating discount factors, consumption decisions, and learning algorithms to enhance model accuracy and decision-making. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a conceptual framework for integrating GT models into network governance processes, supporting more effective decision-making and policy development for CE implementation within the construction value chain.
Hybrid Dynamic Modeling of Sufficiency and Efficiency Interventions for Decarbonization of Embodied Emissions in Urban Stocks Radwa Eissa, Islam H. El-adaway Computing in Civil Engineering 2025 Resilient Robotic and Educational Systems Selected Papers from the ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering 2025, 2025 This study develops a generalizable dynamic modeling framework to analyze embodied emissions of urban stocks and evaluate the decarbonization potential of sufficiency and efficiency interventions. Using national warehouse building stocks as a case study, the framework leverages warehouse archetype distributions across the national stock, their corresponding building embodied carbon intensity values, and forecasted floorspace growth projections. Results reveal that given the rapid growth pace of warehouse stocks, efficiency measures offer relatively higher reductions under equal thresholds, while the threshold for sufficiency interventions would need to increase by a factor of approximately 1.2 to achieve comparable results. Merging sufficiency and efficiency approaches yields the synergistic outcomes with the 10% threshold scenario reducing cumulative emissions by 17.6% by 2050. Ultimately, the proposed framework introduces a dynamic dimension to forecasting emissions and evaluating growth-aware policies, enabling the tailoring of policy frameworks to specific archetypes and growth trends.
Investigating Infrastructure Failures from a Behavioral Ethics Perspective: A Multi-Attribute Network Analysis Approach Tamima Elbashbishy, Radwa Eissa, Islam H. El-adaway, Jeffrey S. Russell Computing in Civil Engineering 2025 Resilient Robotic and Educational Systems Selected Papers from the ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering 2025, 2025 Infrastructure system failures often result from decisions made by key stakeholders responsible for their development and management. Despite the presence of ethical codes designed to prevent such failures, cognitive biases can undermine compliance. Previous research has focused on ethical violations but has overlooked how behavioral ethics constructs drive these breaches. This paper bridges the gap by analyzing an infrastructure system failure case study, then mapping key decisions to violations of the ASCE Code of Ethics and associated behavioral constructs. Following, a graph network analysis quantified the impact and extent of these decisions on project failure. Findings revealed a self-reinforcing cycle of biases such as conformity, slippery slope, and overconfidence, which negatively influenced the decision-making network. Ultimately, the study assists professionals, policymakers, and educators to prioritize behavioral ethics interventions to mitigate violations and ultimately prevent future infrastructure failures.
Circular Economy Integration in LEED: A Decade of Materials and Resources Credit Achievement Patterns Radwa Eissa, Islam H. El-adaway Journal of Management in Engineering, 2024 Previous studies consistently label the Materials and Resources (MR) credit category of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as the least attainable, despite its critical role in transitioning to a circular economy (CE). To this end, a long-standing gap exists in understanding the MR credit achievement, especially in LEED v4, which has been in use for nearly over a decade. This paper evaluates the level of CE integration in LEED v4 across 971 US-based certified projects. The study comprehensively analyzed the projects achievement patterns of the five MR credits: Building Life Cycle Impact Reduction (C1), Environmental Product Declarations (C2), Sourcing of Raw Materials (C3), Sourcing of Material Ingredients (C4), and Construction and Demolition Waste Management (C5). Results revealed that the most prevalent point achievement pattern was 0-1-0-1-2 out of a maximum of 5-2-2-2-2 for C1, C2, C3, C4, and C5. C1 and C3 posed significant challenges, with 588 and 601 projects receiving zero points, respectively. Additionally, the study statistically investigated differences in achievement across project groups of different certification levels, space use, and floorspace categories. Findings are further validated through interviews with LEED experts, who emphasized challenges such as additional costs, inadequate project specifications, and delays in engaging LEED professionals. Results align the status of LEED projects with the lower impact end of the reduce, reuse, recycle framework of CE, which is limited to waste management approaches. Research implications stress the need for collaborative efforts across the industry, owners, and policymakers to enhance CE practices within LEED projects. Ultimately, this study advocates for incentivizing building reuse, the integration of optimized life cycle assessments, as well as enhancing material data availability and transparency.
Accelerating the Circular Economy Transition: A Construction Value Chain-Structured Portfolio of Strategies and Implementation Insights Radwa Eissa, Islam H. El-adaway Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2024 Despite the increasing recognition of the potential of Circular Economy (CE) strategies, their effective application to decarbonize the construction value chain faces multiple challenges. Ambiguity surrounding CE, stemming from a lack of clarity on actionable strategies, is a common concern. Existing studies lack a holistic approach for systematically integrating CE principles throughout the construction value chain, resulting in a scarcity of information on how to practically adopt CE within projects. This research aims to accelerate CE adoption by creating a value chain-structured portfolio of CE strategies and analyzing the implementation of such strategies in actual projects. To this end, a portfolio of CE strategies was compiled in a value chain-based-structure, which was evaluated against 71 US-based projects of exemplary sustainability criteria to scrutinize their successful implementation. Additionally, the study examined the interconnections and network dynamics among these strategies through association rule mining, network, and statistical analysis techniques. Results revealed a pronounced focus on strategies within the design, construction, and end-of-life value chain phases, with significant gaps existing in areas related to project financing, planning, logistics, property market, and operations. “Requiring sustainability certifications, standards, or labels” emerged as the most pivotal strategy in terms of frequency and number of associations, highlighting owners’ significant role in CE transition. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing practical guidance and insights for industry practitioners in terms of actionable CE strategies and their state of implementation, ultimately fostering a more sustainably built environment.
Forecasting Future Research Trends in the Construction Engineering and Management Domain Using Machine Learning and Social Network Analysis Gasser G. Ali, Islam H. El-adaway, Muaz O. Ahmed, Radwa Eissa, Mohamad Abdul Nabi, Tamima Elbashbishy, Ramy Khalef Modelling, 2024 Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) is a broad domain with publications covering interrelated subdisciplines and considered a key source of knowledge sharing. Previous studies used scientometric methods to assess the current impact of CEM publications; however, there is a need to predict future citations of CEM publications to identify the expected high-impact trends in the future and guide new research efforts. To tackle this gap in the literature, the authors conducted a study using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms and Social Network Analysis (SNA) to predict CEM-related citation metrics. Using a dataset of 93,868 publications, the authors trained and tested two machine learning classification algorithms: Random Forest and XGBoost. Validation of the RF and XGBoost resulted in a balanced accuracy of 79.1% and 79.5%, respectively. Accordingly, XGBoost was selected. Testing of the XGBoost model revealed a balanced accuracy of 80.71%. Using SNA, it was found that while the top CEM subdisciplines in terms of the number of predicted impactful papers are “Project planning and design”, “Organizational issues”, and “Information technologies, robotics, and automation”; the lowest was “Legal and contractual issues”. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by studying the citation level, strength, and interconnectivity between CEM subdisciplines as well as identifying areas more likely to result in highly cited publications.
Risk–Reward Share Allocation under Different Integrated Project Delivery Relational Structures: A Monte-Carlo Simulation and Cooperative Game Theoretic Solutions Approach Radwa Eissa, Mohamad Abdul Nabi, Islam H. El-adaway Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 2024 Sharing of risks and rewards is considered to be one of the key benefits and principles of integrated project delivery (IPD). Despite its importance, risk–reward strategies are not implemented widely in IPD construction projects due to the lack of a well-defined basis for establishing adequate allocation plans. This paper fills this knowledge gap. This research followed a multistep methodology. First, the authors calculated the risk control valuations of all potential combinations of coalitions for IPD stakeholders. This was performed using interrelated steps of risk identification and quantification, risk assignment based on associated contractual analysis, establishment of a coordination network, and Monte Carlo simulation. Second, the authors adopted cooperative game theoretic solutions—including Shapely, Owen, and Myerson partition-graph restricted game values—to allocate risk–reward shares for three IPD relational structures. Third, for each IPD relational structure, the authors evaluated the stability and associated negotiation power of coalitions for the IPD stakeholders using the propensity-to-disrupt ratio. Ultimately, the outcomes of this study show that having a multiparty agreement, in which all stakeholders—the owner, designer, contractor, and subcontractor—have open communication channels, creates the most balanced coalition. In this case, all stakeholders have equal willingness to cooperate in the project. Furthermore, as the engagement of the subcontractor in the IPD coalition decreases, the liability and contribution of the contractor increase in terms of project risk control. The latter emphasizes the importance of the technical capabilities of the contractor in the case of restricted subcontractor’s engagement in the project. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by offering a basis for negotiation among various IPD stakeholders in terms of the degree of the subcontractor’s engagement on the one hand and the proportionate share of each stakeholder on the other hand.
Circular Economy Policies for Decarbonization of US Commercial Building Stocks: Data Integration and System Dynamics Coflow Modeling Approach Radwa Eissa, Islam H. El-adaway Journal of Management in Engineering, 2024 Despite the recognition of the built environment as a sector with high potential for reducing embodied emissions, there is a lack of national-level data on embodied carbon emissions attributed to the US commercial building stocks. Hence, there is a need to benchmark the current state of embodied emissions attributed to the commercial built environment and the impact of circular economy (CE) policies for their decarbonization to facilitate well-informed decision-making. This paper fills this knowledge gap through providing policy makers with a framework that estimates the current and future projections of embodied carbon emissions attributable to the US commercial building stocks and highlighting the decarbonization potential of multiple CE policies. To this end, the following multistep research methodology was adopted: (1) collecting and integrating relevant data; (2) conceptualizing and initializing a system dynamics (SD) model; (3) developing subsystems and coflow structures within the SD model using aggregated stock data from the National Energy Modeling System; (4) verifying and testing the developed SD model; and finally (5) suggesting policies and conducting scenario analysis using CE policy precedents. Findings reveal that in the baseline scenario, cumulative emissions are projected to reach 5,605 MtCO2e by 2050. As for the scenario analysis, the unit size reduction policy emerged as the most impactful single policy, achieving a remarkable 38.8% decarbonization. Whereas the comprehensive CE policy that optimizes floorspace demand and the carbon intensity of materials, exhibited a 52% decarbonization potential by midcentury. As such, this study contributes to the body of knowledge by benchmarking emissions projections, providing insights regarding CE decarbonization strategies, their associated primary stakeholders and implementation pathways. Ultimately, by embracing a holistic approach toward CE policies and harnessing accurate and standardized data on building embodied emissions, stakeholders can effectively attain decarbonization goals and promote a sustainable built environment.
Circular Economy Strategies for Decarbonization of the Built Environment Value Chain Scope 3 Emissions: A Network Analysis Radwa Eissa, Islam H. El-adaway Construction Research Congress 2024 CRC 2024, 2024 With the anticipated growth in construction activities, minimizing value chain emissions, including those attributed to activities beyond an organization’s direct control—aka “Scope 3” emissions, and adopting circular economy (CE) practices have become critical to attaining the 2050 climate goals. Extant literature lacks a value-chain-comprehensive set of CE strategies on one hand, and an analysis of their actual project applications on the other. This research aims to build a holistic portfolio of CE actionable strategies that span across the entire built environment value chain, analyzing their extent of implementation and interlinkages within the literature versus actual projects. To this end, the authors conducted a systematic literature and practice review to extract and collate CE strategies and project case studies, and quantified the implementation frequency for each of the strategies and their interlinkages through a network analysis. Results revealed a broad yet fragmented implementation, with the most frequently implemented strategies including requiring sustainability ratings, passive design measures, and landfill diversion, whereas strategies targeting logistics and property market phases were rather scarce. Ultimately, the findings herein can serve as a foundation for a multifunctional database of value chain-specific strategies and case studies that can guide the industry on its track to decarbonization.
A Cooperative Game Theoretic Model for Revenue Sharing in Construction Joint Ventures Construction Research Congress 2020 Project Management and Controls Materials and Contracts Selected Papers from the Construction Research Congress 2020, 2020
