When researchers and graduate students at Lehigh University began planning a Workshop on Climate, Equity, and Resilience in Catastrophe Modeling, they had no idea the gathering would become a roundtable in the wake of the most devastating two weeks in modern meteorological history. The landfalls of hurricanes Helene and Milton, just thirteen days apart and less than a week before the workshop, caused 300 billion dollars in damage across seven states. The storms left more than 250 people dead and laid bare the need to improve the modeling of these events from a number of perspectives including engineering, infrastructure, supply chains, and social support networks.

“Better modeling means better preparedness. The rapid intensification of both storms is a worrisome signal, one of the many signals calling attention to this problem,” said Dr. Paolo Bocchini, PhD., Director of the Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience. “We need to unite the next generation of researchers in engineering, natural hazard science, climate science, and the social science of disasters to understand today better so we can prepare for tomorrow.”

The consequences of other catastrophic phenomena - such as wildfires, pandemics, floods, and earthquakes - are also being addressed by the work of the Center.

Bocchini says Lehigh University’s Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience is a unique research forum using advanced technology and analytics, including Artificial Intelligence, to modernize the science and accuracy of catastrophe modeling. Bocchini and his interdisciplinary team of seven other core faculty are building a collaborative ecosystem of academia, industry, and government agencies to better enable communities to understand and withstand disaster.

The Center, he says, is home to the country’s only graduate-level degree program training the next generation of people to develop and use catastrophe models. Researchers from academia and the private and public sectors come together to combine historical data with the most advanced multi-scale, multi-hazard, and multi-physics models to improve how our communities prepare for climatological and biological disasters.

They’ve been flooded with calls and questions over the last several weeks. These questions are born out of fear and concern. But they can be cause for a cure. That cure, Bocchini says, comes by connecting the evolutions of engineering, climatology, earth sciences, and sociology to better understand the whys and results of tomorrow’s catastrophes.

About The Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience

Decades of research in natural hazards and seven years of specific focus on catastrophe modeling culminated in the 2024 establishment of Lehigh University’s Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience. The Center provides an interdisciplinary home for the scientific and educational activities of researchers, students, and scholars working on natural disasters and health-related threats. Lehigh identified catastrophe modeling and resilience research as one of its strategic areas of growth and has invested in the development and advancement of the Center’s work.

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