Beyond Damage and Financial Loss: Modelling Earthquake Risk in Complex Urban Systems

This event is organised by the SECED Young Members' Subcommittee and University College London (UCL) and is chaired by Maria Liapopoulou. The event will be held in-person at UCL Chadwick Building Room G07 (Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT) and will also be broadcast online.

Synopsis

As urbanisation accelerates and climate dynamics evolve, the risks posed by earthquakes to infrastructure and communities are becoming increasingly complex. The interdependencies between natural hazards, the built environment, and coping capacities demand a more integrated approach to earthquake risk assessment that moves beyond traditional metrics of physical damage and the resulting financial loss. Current modelling tools often fall short, failing to account for the compounding effects of hazard interactions, the cascading nature of systemic disruptions, including environmental impact, and the lived experiences of affected populations.

This talk will explore the frontiers of earthquake risk modelling, with a particular emphasis on enabling people-centred decision-making in urban contexts. It will examine how recent methodological advances are reshaping our understanding of seismic impact, capturing the environmental footprint of earthquakes, their human and social consequences, and their entanglement with other hazards.

About the speakers

Carmine Galasso is a Professor of Catastrophe Risk Engineering at University College London within the Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering. Additionally, he serves as the department’s Research Director and is the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. He is one of the founders and co-director of the Disaster Engineering for Resilient Societies Laboratory (DE|RISC Lab), working at the intersection of civil engineering with other disciplines to facilitate multi-hazard risk and resilience-informed decision-making.

Karim Aljawhari is a Physical Vulnerability Specialist at the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Foundation in Pavia, Italy. He develops advanced earthquake fragility and vulnerability models, with a focus on life-cycle sustainability and environmental impacts. Karim holds a PhD in Earthquake Engineering from the University of Pavia and the University School for Advanced Studies (IUSS), Italy, and an MSc in Earthquake Engineering with Disaster Management from the University College London.

 Nicole Paul is a PhD Candidate at University College London, Department of Risk & Disaster Reduction, researching household displacement and return in disasters. Her background is in civil/structural engineering, with a Professional Engineer license in the State of California and MSc and BSc degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, USA. Prior to starting her doctoral studies, she spent nearly a decade quantifying disaster risks in industry at Arup and the Global Earthquake Model Foundation.

Pouria Kourehpaz is a Senior Risk and Resilience Modeler at First Street in New York, USA. His work focuses on connecting climate risks to economic losses and resilience. Prior to his current role, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in multi-hazard risk and resilience engineering at University College London, researching multi-hazard recovery analysis of infrastructure. His background is in structural and earthquake engineering, with PhD and MSc degrees from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Registration

• In-person attendance at this event is free, but advance registration is required via this form. Seats are allocated on a first come, first served basis. Please arrive at 1:00 pm for a 1:05pm prompt start of the meeting. Tea, coffee, and light lunch will be served from 2:00 pm, after the end of the presentations.
• The event will also be broadcast online. To attend the presentations online, please join the meeting via Teams* by clicking on this link. No registration is required for online attendance.

Further information

This online talk is organised by SECED Young Members. For further information, please contact Maria Liapopoulou (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

* Microsoft Teams is freely available on all major platforms, including Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS. To download and install the software, follow this link. SECED is not sponsored by or otherwise affiliated with Microsoft, and we do not endorse any Microsoft products.