News

Climate Resilience Center awarded

August 15, 2024

The Department of Energy has awarded a Climate Resilience Center at Lehigh. Dr. Ethan Yang will serve as PI, and we are recruiting! Join the Team!

NSF Awards IUCRC Planning grant

May 10, 2024

The National Science Foundation has awarded a planning grant to pursue an Industry University Cooperative Research Center in Catastrophe Modeling.  Read more

The CatModeling Tour Continues

December 7, 2023

The Catastrophe Modeling & Resilience Tour has now visited several Universities and Institutions. The latest was the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. If you are interested in having our tour visit you, please get in touch.

Applications are open

November 22, 2023

Applications for our Master's Degree in Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience and the associated Graduate Certificate are now open.

Apply now!

Graduate Degrees officially approved

September 21, 2023

Lehigh University's Senate officially approved the new Master of Science in Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience, and the Graduate Certificate in Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience. These programs are the first in the world! Applications will open very soon.

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CatModeling & Resilience with Transportation Officials

September 12, 2023

Dr. Bocchini presented the activities of the Catastrophe Modeling Center and Coordination Network at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the AASHTO’s Committee on Transportation System Security and Resilience.

CatModeling Center participates in Influenza Forecast

August 31, 2023

Dr. McAndrew's team has been selected to participate in the 2023-24 Influenza Forecasting program with their proposal for the "Development of Forecasts and/or Scenario Projections for Influenza to Inform Public Health Decision-Making."

Optimal sampling strategies

July 13, 2023

Functional Quantization is an excellent sampling strategy for many practical applications involving random processes and fields. At one of the most important international conferences in the field (ICASP 14 in Dublin, Ireland), Sena Mursel showed that Functional Quantization can be improved and tailored to optimize performance on the statistics we care the most about.

Center featured in keynote at ICASP 14

July 11, 2023

Dr. Jamie Padgett (Rice University), one of the leaders of our CatModeling Coordination Network, gave a broad-ranging and insightful keynote speech at ICASP 14 and listed our efforts among the many tackling risk, resilience, and extreme event research.

CatModelers at Engineering Mechanics Conference

June 8, 2023

Ms. Xinyue Wang presents the work of the Center at the 2023 Conference of the Engineering Mechanics Institute in Atlanta. She is paving the way for class vulnerability curves for transmission towers.

New CatModeler from the Center

May 20, 2023

Mohanad Khazaali, newly hooded doctor, keeps up the tradition of the center at Verisk - Extreme Event Solutions, certainly one of the most prominent CatModeling firms in the world.

The Brilliance of resilience

April 22, 2023

The Geisinger School of Medicine organized the "Resilience Colloquium 2023: The Brilliance of Resilience." The research and educational programs of the Catastrophe Modeling Center were featured in one of the keynotes.

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Catastrophe Modeling and Data (Private Sector, Public Sector and Academia)

March 31, 2023

The leadership team of the Catastrophe Modeling Coordination Network met leaders from the private sector, public sector, and academia for a day long workshop at the Millennium Downtown Hotel, New York City on Friday, March 31 (2023) to formally launch the center. The workshop consisted of two panel discussions focused on catastrophe modeling research and education, each followed by breakout sessions to discuss key takeaways and brainstorm how the three sectors can synergize and collaborate to advance the field of catastrophe, risk, and resilience modeling. The day was concluded with a poster session for students and post-docs involved with the Coordination Network to showcase their research, followed by a social hour.

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Wildfire Risk Assessment

March 13, 2023

Xinyue Wang publishes a paper on wildfire risk, presenting the first mechanistic approach to the problem. Read more.

Individual Risk Factors affect the Risk of Disease Spillover

September 01, 2022 

Researchers of the Center collect data in Africa and confirm correlation between social, economic and demographic factors and the propensity for individuals to engage in behaviors that expose them to Ebola spillover.  

A Sharper Focus on Cat Modeling

December 24, 2021

Paolo Bocchini, Daniel Conus, Brian Davison and their colleagues leverage their collaborative experience in probabilistic modeling to sharpen their focus on catastrophe modeling, which is still a niche discipline in academia. 

Lehigh University researchers track bats to predict next Ebola outbreak

June 4, 2018

A fruit-eating mammal with an average wingspan of 3 feet could hold the answer to where the next Ebola outbreak will occur. Two Lehigh University professors are among a growing number of researchers investigating the role of African bats in the spread of the highly fatal virus. 

Computing the optimal disaster response

August 12, 2016

Lehigh researchers develop a new numerical optimization approach specifically tailored to study post disaster recovery of infrastructure systems, and they apply it to the transportation network of San Diego.