News

CERCat had a rewarding week attending the Reinsurance Association of America's Cat Risk 2026 Conference in Orlando, FL. 

Thank you to everyone who attended our breakout sessions and came to visit us at our booth. We're excited to carry these conversations forward.

We are excited to share a look into CERCat's recent momentum. Read more about our recent Semi-Annual Industry Advisory Board Meeting.

Story here.

CERCat and the Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience are attending the Reinsurance Association of America Cat Risk Management Conference!

📍Orlando, Florida

🗓️ February 23 - 26, 2026

We're proud to sponsor and exhibit - stop by Booth #8 and attend our breakout sessions! 

🎤Thursday February 26th @ 8:45 AM: Session IV: Industry-Academic Collaborations on Seasonal & Long-Term TC Hazard Assessment (CERCat)

🎤Thursday February 26th @ 9:30 AM: Session III: Industry-Academic Collaborations on Vulnerability Models (CERCat)

A highlight from our recent CERCat Industry Advisory Board (IAB) Meeting was the poster session! CERCat students and postdocs showcased their research and had the opportunity to present it to the attendees.

We had 20+ posters and awards were given to the top two, as voted on by our event participants:

🏆 WoongHee Jung, a Postdoctoral Researcher from Lehigh's Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience, who presented: "Development of Empirical Wildfire Fragility Curves for Residential Buildings in California"

🏆 Jainish Patel, a PhD student from Rice University, who presented: "Risk Assessment of Coastal Structural Portfolios: Accounting for the Effects of Neighboring Structures"

Thank you to everyone who made the poster session so successful! 

A huge thank you to everyone who attended CERCat's Semi-Annual Industry Advisory Board (IAB) Meeting on Rice's campus from February 5-6th. 

It was a privilege to host our current partner companies and welcome several prospective partners. The energy in the room underscored the importance of our shared mission: bridging the gap between academic research and industry application to build a more resilient future.

Key highlights from the meeting included:

🟤Mid-Year Progress Updates: We shared updates on our six active research projects, demonstrating the strides we are making, together.

🔵Future Project Brainstorming: We kicked off the collaborative process of identifying and scoping themes for our next round of projects. The insights provided by our industry partners are invaluable in ensuring our research is directly responsive to real world needs.

Thank you again to everyone who made the event so successful. 

Reach out to us if you're interested in learning more about becoming a member.

We're ready for our CERCat Semi-Annual Industry Advisory Board Meeting on February 5-6, 2026. 

We'll be providing mid-year project updates and working to develop project themes and ideas for the next round of project voting.

We are excited to host our current and prospective partners on Rice University's campus! 

Reach out if you want to learn more about becoming a member.

Congratulations to Jamie Padgett, CERCat Deputy Director, on being named a 2025 J.M. Ko Award Laureate at Rice University. 

Dr. Padgett, Stanley C. Moore Professor and Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was honored for her significant contributions to the development of risk assessment tools that strengthen infrastructure resilience. Her research examines how major infrastructure performs under multiple threats, including earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and aging. 

Jamie serves on several disaster mitigation initiatives, including CERCat, and we're very fortunate to have her leadership. 

Are you attending AGU25?

Join us for our session: "Interdisciplinary Advances in Catastrophe Modeling and Disaster Resilience."

We are bridging science, policy, and practice to improve risk assessment, equity, and resilience in the face of climate change. 

🗓️ Thursday December 18

📍Posters (NH41E): 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Hall EFG

🗣️Oral Session (NH43B): 2:15PM - 3:45 PM in Room 295-296

Presenters: James Doss-Gollin, Benjamin Felzer, Avantika Gori, and Ethan Yang

We hope to see you there!

It's hard to believe it's been over two months since we held CERCat's Inaugural Industry Advisory Board Meeting! 

Our CERCat researchers and industry partners are teamed up and tackling the following first round of projects: 

• Transforming current hail fragility curves into SCS multi-hazard fragility curves

• Empirical wildfire fragility curves for residential buildings, based on past event data

• Linking regional climate variability to local TC hazard probabilities

• Multi-modal damage assessment in post-disaster scenarios with AI and remote sensing

• Parametric fragility models of slender structures under hurricane wind loads

• A nonstationary joint probability method for tropical cyclone hazard assessment

If you’re interested in these topics and want to learn more about becoming a member, reach out! Our partners receive early access to research results and can leverage their research dollars through jointly funded projects.

Read more about our launch here.

Dr. David Casagrande and a group of Lehigh University students had the remarkable honor of attending the United Nations Climate Summit. 

David is a faculty member of the Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience (CAT), a member of the Consortium for Enhancing Resilience and Catastrophe Modeling (CERCat), and a Professor of Anthropology & Environmental Studies. 

Read more here.

Discover how Lehigh and Rice Universities are bridging the gap between academia and industry, and learn more about CERCat's first round of research projects. 

Read more here.

On August 7-8, 2025 the Consortium for Enhancing Resilience and Catastrophe Modeling (CERCat) held its inaugural Industry Advisory Board Meeting. It was a fantastic two days and a true testament to the power of coming together to solve shared challenges.

Our Industry Advisory Board played a critical role providing project feedback and their voting helped us prioritize the key projects we’ll tackle together during our first year.

We are thrilled to get started working on:

• Transforming current hail fragility curves into SCS multi-hazard fragility curves

• Empirical wildfire fragility curves for residential buildings, based on past event data

• Linking regional climate variability to local TC hazard probabilities

• Multi-modal damage assessment in post-disaster scenarios with AI and remote sensing

• Parametric fragility models of slender structures under hurricane wind loads

• A nonstationary joint probability method for tropical cyclone hazard assessment

If you’re interested in these topics and want to learn more about becoming a member, reach out! Our partners receive early access to research results and can leverage their research dollars through jointly funded projects.  

This is just the beginning, and we eagerly await the results of this collaborative effort. Stay tuned for updates!

Dr. Paolo Bocchini, CERCat Director, and Director of the Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience at Lehigh University, joins The Risky Science Podcast to discuss research and innovation in catastrophe risk modeling. "Research in academia and in the private sector has been progressing independently, with minimal interaction," he says. "That results in duplicated efforts and lost opportunities for synergy." The newly launched Consortium for Enhancing Resilience and Catastrophe Modeling (CERCat), a partnership with Rice University, is designed to close that gap.

Read the story and listen to the podcast episode here from The Risky Science Podcast

Exciting news! Lehigh University and Rice University are thrilled to announce the launch of our research consortium dedicated to advancing the fields of catastrophe modeling and resilience. This dynamic initiative will build strong partnerships between leading university researchers and expert industry professionals. By uniting academic rigor with practical expertise, the consortium aims to tackle critical research challenges and collectively elevate the standards and capabilities within the catastrophe modeling sector. We eagerly anticipate the groundbreaking advancements that this collaborative endeavor will yield.