Ayenew Yihune Demeke

Ayenew Yihune Demeke is a PhD student in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at North Dakota State University (NDSU), Fargo, North Dakota, USA.

Research interests

Construction automation, the Internet of Things (IoT), building information modeling (BIM), and reality capture.

Current research focuses on highway and construction work zone safety using sensors and data-driven models:

• Dynamic hazard zone modeling for proximity detection between workers and construction equipment, using probabilistic (bivariate Gaussian) hazard zones driven by real-time GPS and IMU data (Automation in Construction, 2026; ISARC 2025).
• Vehicle intrusion detection in highway work zones using inertial sensors on traffic cones and lightweight deep learning (Automation in Construction, 2025).
• Sensor technologies for work zone safety, reviewed systematically for intrusion and proximity hazards (Transportation Research Record, 2025).

Earlier work, carried out at Addis Ababa Science and Technology University (AASTU), Ethiopia, addressed pavement geotechnics: constitutive models for the resilient modulus of subgrade soils, evaluated on Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) data (Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part B: Pavements, 2024; Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, 2023).

See all publications, with free PDFs where available.