IoT and Digital Twin

IoT and Digital Twin Research Group

 
 

The Internet of Things and Digital Twin Research Group at RIT Dubai develops end-to-end cyber-physical systems that connect sensing, communication, edge/fog/cloud computing, digital representation, analytics, and intelligent action. The group emphasizes experimental and translational research, developing ideas into working prototypes and validating them through laboratory and field-oriented studies.

Goals of the IoT & DT Research Group

  • Developing end-to-end cyber-physical systems that connect sensing, communication, edge/fog/cloud computing, digital representation, and intelligent action.
  • Translating research ideas into working prototypes and validating them through laboratory and field-oriented studies.
  • Advancing wireless sensor networks and edge/fog/cloud architectures for efficient data collection, distributed processing, and resilient communication.
  • Advancing digital-twin-enabled smart buildings and campuses to improve occupancy awareness, energy management, and indoor environmental quality.
  • Enhancing infrastructure safety and reliability through IoT-based structural health monitoring, synchronized sensing, and predictive assessment.
  • Applying machine learning and transformer-based AI to condition assessment, anomaly detection, and automated decision support.

Research Verticals

The group leads research projects across five domains, connecting sensing, intelligent computing, digital representation, and decision-making for real-world cyber-physical systems.
 

Combined IoT and Digital Twin Solution for Smart Buildings

Structural Health Monitoring

Intelligent Monitoring

Security

Faculty

Mohamed Abdelraheem headshot

Mohamed Abdelraheem

Associate Professor of Computing and Information Technology
mmtcad1@rit.edu
Ahmed Mostafa headshot

Ahmed Mostafa

Assistant Professor of Computing and Information Technology
axmcad4@rit.edu
Ebram William headshot

Ebram William

Assistant Professor of Computing
exwcad@rit.edu

Research Projects

Combined IoT and Digital Twin Solution for Smart Buildings

Combined IoT and Digital Twin Solution for Smart Buildings

Researchers: Dr. Mohamed Abdelraheem, Dr. Ahmed Mostafa
Collaborators: Student research team / project co-authors

Campus buildings in hot-climate regions can incur unnecessary energy consumption when HVAC and lighting operate at full load regardless of actual occupancy. This work develops a Sense–Decide–Act smart-campus framework integrating distributed LoRaWAN-based IoT sensing, a cloud-synchronized digital-twin dashboard, schedule-driven control for predictable classroom spaces, and AI-enabled short-term occupancy prediction for non-scheduled common areas.

A laboratory-scale three-zone prototype validates the workflow from physical sensing and edge processing to cloud synchronization and actuation. Physical energy measurements show substantial reductions relative to static full-load operation while the dual-baseline evaluation separates the value of intelligent automation from basic scheduling.

Click here to view the conference

IoT-Enabled Structural Health Monitoring

IoT for Structural Health Monitoring and Intelligent Infrastructure

Researcher: Dr. Mohamed Abdelraheem

Collaborators: Muhammad Hassan, Dr. Amr A. Nassr

This research investigates IoT-based monitoring for infrastructure assessment with a focus on structural health monitoring. Two systems are presented as case studies. The first integrates synchronized sensing nodes, short- and long-range wireless communication, and centralized cloud-based vibration analysis for damage detection. The second advances the architecture through a hybrid fog-cloud model in which preliminary damage detection is performed locally before selected data are transmitted to the cloud for deeper analysis.

The work highlights practical challenges including sensor synchronization, data reliability, communication efficiency, and distributed computation.

Click here to view the paper/proceedings

Synchronized IoT Framework for Vibration-Based Structural Health Monitoring of Suspension Bridges

Researcher: Dr. Mohamed Abdelraheem

Collaborators: Muhammad Hassan, Dr. Amr A. Nassr

This project designs, implements, and experimentally validates an IoT-based structural health monitoring system for suspension bridges using synchronized vibration measurements.

The framework integrates distributed MEMS-based sensing nodes, GPS-assisted timing, low-power wireless communication, and cloud-based modal analysis in one end-to-end architecture. Experimental validation on a laboratory-scale suspension bridge demonstrates the feasibility of synchronized low-power sensing and multi-tier communication for continuous structural condition assessment.

Click here to view the paper

Intelligent Monitoring

AI-Enabled Monitoring and Decision Support

Researcher: Dr. Mohamed Abdelraheem

Collaborators: Ahmed Muhammed, Dr. Amr A. Nassr, Islam Alkabbany

This research explores transformer-based artificial intelligence for bridge damage identification and structural health monitoring. In contrast with conventional approaches that depend heavily on manual feature engineering or recurrent/convolutional architectures, the proposed framework investigates attention mechanisms for learning long-range dependencies and subtle temporal patterns in vibration response signals. The approach supports automated identification of structural condition and damage-related patterns and contributes to AI-enabled digital-twin monitoring workflows.

Click here to view the paper

Security

Secure and Resilient IoT and Digital Twin Systems

Researcher: Dr. Mohamed Abdelraheem

Collaborators: Dr. Mostafa Taha, Secure Cryptographic Implementations Lab (SCI-Lab), Carleton University

This collaboration investigates quantum-safe and side-channel-resilient post-quantum cryptography for multi-hop IoT systems used in digital-twin-enabled structural health monitoring. The work targets long-lived critical infrastructure such as bridges and towers, where sensing, communication, and digital-twin platforms must remain secure over extended service lifetimes. The project extends the group's IoT and digital-twin research toward resilient and future-proof security for critical cyber-physical infrastructure.

Click here to view project information

IoT & Digital Twin Contact

The group welcomes collaboration with RIT faculty, students, government entities, industry partners, and academic institutions interested in IoT, digital twins, smart infrastructure, sensing, intelligent systems, and secure connected technologies.

Mohamed Abdelraheem
Associate Professor of Computing and Information Technology
Computing Sciences Department

Website last updated: October 16, 2026