Paolo Bocchini

Paolo Bocchini, professor of civil and environmental engineering, addresses the crowd during a workshop on catastrophe modeling at Ben Franklin Technology Partners earlier this month.

National Organizations Learn about Lehigh-led Center for Climate, Resilience and Equity in Catastrophe Modeling

Poised to establish and lead an Industry-University Research Center, Lehigh University hosted a workshop Oct. 17-18 bringing national experts in natural disaster risk and insurance to the Mountaintop Campus.

Story by

Christina Tatu

Photography by

Marcus Smith '25

Story by Christina Tatu and Lauren Thein

The faculty of the Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience at Lehigh continued their pursuit of establishing an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) by hosting a workshop last week inviting industry leaders, scientists and government officials from around the country to the Mountaintop campus to learn about the center’s research and to form partnerships that will advance the study of disasters and their consequences.

Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) selected a team from Lehigh, coordinated by Paolo Bocchini, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, to lead the planning phase of an IUCRC in partnership with Rice University of Houston. Such centers bring together those in academia with industry innovators to accelerate research and technological breakthroughs in their respective fields. Lehigh’s center would be funded by the NSF and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In order to be named an IUCRC, the group must secure industry partners providing funding for research and insight into relevant projects. The purpose of the workshop was to attract partners to advance the center. A final application for the center will be presented to the NSF by the end of the year.

CatModeling Workshop

Attendees at a workshop on catastrophe modeling at Ben Franklin Tech Ventures on Oct. 17-18.

The workshop was well attended by those in both the private and public sectors. Representation included attendees from Chubb Insurance Company, USAA, Swiss Re, IBM Research, AON, Verisk Extreme Event Solutions and Moody’s. From the public sector, representatives from the National Institute of Standards & Technology, Federal Highway Administration and Idaho National Laboratory attended to learn more. Regulatory agencies also attended, including the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

This moment in the process was at least seven years in the making, Bocchini told the crowd of approximately 100 guests gathered at Ben Franklin Technology partners.

“When we were studying community resilience and infrastructure resilience, we realized we were neglecting the role of the private sector, in particular the insurance sector,” Bocchini said. “Because of that, our models were not accounting for the crucial role this can have in the post-disaster scenario to fuel rebuilding and recovery.”

It was 2017 when Bocchini partnered with colleagues at Rice University who were conducting similar research to create a collaborative center. At the time, there weren’t any academic centers dedicated to catastrophe modeling and resilience, he said.

Cat Conference

A guests inspects handouts at the catastrophe modeling workshop on Oct. 17-18.

“There were some connections, but they were mostly individual faculty who were reaching out or were approached by the insurance sector on this topic, and so we set out to work and create that connection, that center that could facilitate these kinds of interactions,” he said.

The Lehigh/Rice team was inspired to apply for the IUCRC grant after a workshop in New York City in March 2023 attended by 50 key stakeholders from academia, industry and government.

“We felt like we were skating toward where the puck was going. We already had the momentum, and we wanted to really bring it home,” Bocchini told the crowd gathered at Ben Franklin. “So we went through the selection process … and today we’re here to clear the last major hurdle, and that is to secure partners. We are very excited by the turnout and quality of people who are here.”

CatModeling and the Benefits of an IUCRC

Catastrophe Modeling, or CatModeling, attempts to predict the likelihood of potentially catastrophic events, such as natural disasters, pandemics, financial crises, as well as political unrest and the associated consequences, including casualties, financial losses, damage to buildings and other infrastructure.

CatModeling is particularly important for insurance companies who often cover the cost of disasters. The speed with which insurers can make payments can impact the long-term recovery of a region. Despite the importance of CatModeling, the field has not previously been treated as a traditional discipline explored systemically in academia. It can benefit from stronger collaborations with the fundamental and interdisciplinary research done in academia.

The NSF grant supports the vision of a single, interinstitutional center that gives stakeholders access to scholars with a rich portfolio of experience. Once the IUCRC is established, partner institutions are expected to contribute by appointing a representative to serve on the advisory board and participate in annual board meetings to prioritize projects, offer strategic advice for the coming year and provide an annual financial contribution. Because of these contributions, the NSF grant could raise more than $10 million over 10 years for the center.

“What we do is we bring universities and industry together, where the universities provide research infrastructure, human capital and expertise that you may not have in-house, or to augment what you do have in-house,” said Barbara Ransom, NSF cognizant program director.

There are 75 IUCRCs at 117 universities across the United States, according to the NSF. One of the benefits of such centers is access to talented students. As a result of these centers, more than 3,000 students have been hired by IUCRC member companies to date, says the organization.

“It’s really an engine of innovation for industry that helps you bring new ideas and new ways of thinking about projects, and delivers gap-filling knowledge for you so that you can move forward,” Ransom said.

Proposed Research

The scholars at Lehigh and Rice bring expertise in hazard characterization, climate change, infrastructure modeling, applied data science, scenario selection, community-level aspects of disasters and probabilistic modeling.

On Thursday, faculty from both universities presented 10 research topics proposed for the center and held breakout sessions to discuss them with prospective partners. On Friday, attendees participated in a voting session, similar to how voting would work in an IUCRC.

The project that received the most interest was, “Quantifying uncertainties in tropical cyclone hazard projections across spatial scales.” This project will develop a multi-scale framework to diagnose, quantify and propagate uncertainties across and within tropical cyclone (TC) models to improve local-scale, multi-hazards risk estimates. Other presented projects included: "Multi-Hazard Impact, Risk and Resilience Assessment of Supply Chain Routes,” and a project on "Multi-modal Damage Assessment in Post-Disaster Scenarios with AI and Remote Sensing.”

CatModeling Conference

Lehigh and Rice University on Houston are partnering on an Industry-University Research Center.

Dickie Whitaker, interim advisory board chair for the potential IUCRC and CEO of the catastrophe modeling open-source platform Oasis Loss Modelling Framework Ltd., helped refine the research proposals on site per suggestions from conference guests and potential investors, and plans to continue that process through virtual meetings in the future.

“We have to take good ideas that have potential and turn them into great ideas that have practical benefits,” Whitaker said.

Aman Karamlou, ’17 Ph.D., a senior research engineer and manager for the catmodeling firm Verisk Extreme Event Solutions, said he could see his work benefitting from the IUCRC’s research, particularly when it comes to understanding and modeling business interruption following an extreme event.

“If a business cannot operate following an event, insurance basically pays the business for the revenue or the profit that’s lost, and in many cases, modeling that is quite sophisticated,” Karamlou said. “Some of the research might be helpful in better modeling that business interruption aspect.”

CatModeling at Lehigh

In addition to forming an IUCRC, in February the Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience was chosen by Lehigh as the first of three University Research Centers. University leaders have said the designation will make Bocchini’s team more competitive with other institutions vying for large-scale funding, as such grants often require interdisciplinarity with a strong sense of institutional commitment.

The Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience at Lehigh started in 2021, though Lehigh had teams of researchers studying disaster resilience for years before that, developing relationships with collaborators in industry and academia, as well as securing funding for a variety of projects. The broader catastrophe modeling coordination network, for which Lehigh’s center serves as a hub, includes founding members from Rice University, Stanford University in Palo Alto and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. It has expanded to include additional members from Washington State, Missouri University of Science and Technology and Columbia University in New York.

Those wishing to learn more about the IUCRC or Lehigh's CatModeling program may email catmodeling@lehigh.edu.

Story by

Christina Tatu

Photography by

Marcus Smith '25

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