Carmine Galasso | PhD
Professor of Catastrophe Risk Engineering
Research Director, Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering
Deputy Departmental Graduate Tutor (Research Students)
University College London (UCL) | Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering | Chadwick Building GM14 | Gower St | WC1E 6BT London | UK
Email: c.galasso@ucl.ac.uk
Welcome to the website for Carmine Galasso's research group!
I am a Professor of Catastrophe Risk Engineering in the University College London (UCL)'s Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering (CEGE), UK. Before joining UCL, I worked as a Catastrophe Risk Modeler at Applied Insurance Research (AIR) Worldwide (now Verisk), San Francisco, USA, and as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Performance-based Earthquake Engineering Laboratory, at the University of California, Irvine, USA. I earned my PhD in Earthquake Risk at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy, in January 2011.
My research focuses on developing and applying probabilistic and statistical methods and tools for catastrophe risk modelling and disaster risk reduction. I investigate risks to building portfolios and infrastructure exposed to multiple natural hazards, including earthquakes, typhoons, and floods, with particular emphasis on community infrastructure (schools, hospitals, heritage assets) in developing countries.
I co-lead the DE|RISC Lab: Disaster Engineering for ResIlient SoCieties Laboratory at UCL with Dr Gemma Cremen and Dr Roberto Gentile, working at the intersection of civil engineering and other disciplines to facilitate multi-hazard risk- and resilience-informed decision-making for a better tomorrow’s world. Our ultimate goal is to provide society with a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable built environment.
Our research is funded by the UK Research and Innovation and its Research Councils, the European Commission, the British Council, the Chinese International Centre for Collaborative Research on Disaster Risk Reduction (ICCR-DRR), the China Scholarship Council (CSC), the (Mexican) Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), the World Bank and its Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), the Motorola Solution Foundation, and the Willis Research Network, among others.
We strive to create a lab that welcomes, supports, values, and includes people of diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives!
WHAT'S NEW
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November 1, 2024: Carmine Galasso has been appointed as an Associate Editor of the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, published by Springer Nature.
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October 29, 2024: Carmine Galasso contributed to an Elsevier post on how to prepare a cover letter for journal submission. Read it here.
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October 18, 2024: Carmine Galasso participated in an online panel discussion on'Multi-hazard and Risk-informed System for Enhanced Local and Regional Disaster Risk Management' within the framework of the MEDiate project. This event will be part of the Europe and Central Asia Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Montenegro on November 6-8, 2024. This is a key forum addressing disaster risk challenges in the region. It brings together governments, civil society, and the private sector from 55 countries to share knowledge, build capacities, and make commitments to reduce disaster risks, supporting the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.
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September 13, 2023: Prof Suzanne Wilkinson (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) visited our research lab. During the visit, she met with members of our team, explored our ongoing research, and discussed potential collaborations for future projects.
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September 2, 2023: Prof Sabine Loos (University of Michigan, USA) visited our research lab and gave an invited talk on ‘Designing human-centered disaster impact information’. DE|RISC Lab members gave lightning talks on their research during the visit.
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August 5, 2024: The paper 'Integrating fire safety into bridge design is essential for resilient infrastructure' by Andrea Franchini, Carmine Galasso, et al. has been featured on the Editors' Highlights page of Nature Communications, Section ‘Engineering and Infrastructure’. The Editors' Highlights pages aim to showcase the 50 best papers recently published in an area.
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August 1, 2024: Carmine Galasso has concluded his 12-month academic sabbatical at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver Campus, and has returned to UCL. He now serves as Research Director and Deputy Departmental Graduate Tutor (Research Students) in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at UCL.
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July 5, 2024: Several members of the research group attended, chaired sessions, and presented their research at the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (WCEE2024), held in Milan, Italy, from June 30 to July 5. Details associated with those presentations are available on the Research Outputs > Conference Proceedings/Abstracts page.
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May 24, 2024: Congratulations to Karim Aljawhari for passing his final PhD viva at IUSS Pavia, Italy, today. Karim's PhD dissertation, co-supervised by Carmine Galasso and Roberto Gentile at UCL, is titled ‘Holistic Seismic Rehabilitation: Integrating Sustainability, Direct, and Indirect Losses in Risk-targeted Retrofit Design and Optimization’. The examiners were Dr Flavia De Luca, University of Bristol, UK, Dr Xavier Romão, University of Porto, Portugal, and Prof Vlatko Sesos, Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology – IZIIS, North Macedonia. Karim’s work received an outstanding grade of “summa cum laude”, the highest grade in the Italian system. He has now joined the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Foundation in Italy as a Physical Vulnerability Specialist. Well done, and all the very best, Karim!
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May 20, 2024: Congratulations to Andrea Franchini for passing his final PhD viva today. Andrea's PhD dissertation, co-supervised by Carmine Galasso and Jose Torero at UCL, is titled ‘Consequence-oriented Fire Intensity Optimisation: Methodology Development and Application to Bridges'. The examiners were Prof Katherine Cashell, UCL, and Prof Luke Bisby, University of Edinburgh, UK. Andrea has now joined Ghent University, Belgium, as a Research Fellow working on an ERC Starting Grant titled ‘AFireTest - Adaptive Fire Testing: A New Foundation Stone for Fire Safety’. Well done, and all the very best, Andrea!
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May 3, 2024: Carmine Galasso attended and gave two talks on ‘Engineering earthquake early warning’ and ‘Tomorrow’s Cities: An Interdisciplinary Decision Support Environment Delivering Risk-Sensitive Urban Planning for Expanding Cities in the Global South’ at the Seismological Society of America (SSA) Annual Meeting 2024, in Anchorage, AK, USA.
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April 26, 2024: Carmine Galasso visited Prof Jack Baker at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, and gave an invited talk on ‘Forward-looking Catastrophe Risk Modeling for Resilience: Recent Advances and Perspectives’ at the Stanford Urban Resilience Initiative (SURI). Carmine, Nicole Paul, and Prof Henry Burton (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) also participated in a career panel organized by the EERI-Stanford Student Chapter and SURI students.
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April 3, 2024: Carmine Galasso and Nicole Paul hosted a workshop at UBC on ‘Household Displacement and Return in Disasters,’ with talks by Nicole Paul, Chenbo Wang (online), and Giulia Brutti from UCL. This was followed by an engaging discussion with UBC academics Stephanie Chang, Sara Shneiderman, Carlos Molina Hutt, and members of the Engineering for Seismic Resilience Laboratory (ESR Lab; Kiranjot Kaur, Kristen Blowes, Amber Shen, Ehsan Ferdosi, Pouria Kourehpaz) at UBC.
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April 1, 2024: Many congratulations to Leandro Iannacone on accepting a faculty position as an Assistant Professor of Structural Engineering, focusing on risk and reliability analysis of the built environment, at Lund University, Department of Building & Environmental Technology, Division of Structural Engineering, Sweden.
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March 31, 2024: Carmine Galasso has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (IJDRR), published by Elsevier, effective April 2024.
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March 12, 2024: Carmine Galasso visited Prof Abbie Liel at the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA, and gave an invited talk on ‘Engineering Earthquake Early Warning Systems’ in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering.
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February 8, 2024: Carmine Galasso gave an invited talk on 'Engineering Earthquake Early Warning' as part of the UBC Structural & Earthquake Engineering Seminar Series (CIVL 597-004) at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Campus, Canada.
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February 1, 2024: Carmine Galasso and Pouria Kourehpaz gave invited presentations at the 2024 NHERI Computational Symposium at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
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January 24, 2024: Carmine Galasso gave an invited talk on 'Urban growth and social vulnerability in the Kathmandu Valley' at the University of British Columbia, Himalaya Program, Vancouver Campus, Canada.
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January 8, 2024: Many congratulations to Carlos Mesta for receiving an Honorable Mention (Graduate Student Paper Prize) from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), USA, for the paper ‘Quantifying the potential benefits of risk-mitigation strategies on present and future seismic losses in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal’ (by C. Mesta, G. Cremen, C. Galasso) published in Earthquake Spectra.
RESEARCH AREAS
Catastrophe Risk Modelling for Natural Hazards
Performance-based Multi-Hazard Engineering
Earthquake-induced Ground-motion Modelling
Uncertainty Modelling and Structural Reliability
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