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Dr. Bocchini is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Bocchini's research activity is related to the use of probabilistic concepts, computational mechanics, operations research, and other numerical tools in civil engineering problems. Most of his recent research deals with catastrophe modeling and community resilience under natural disasters, to support decisions on design, retrofit, preparedness, damage mitigation, and recovery of critical infrastructure systems. He is also the founder and director of the Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience Center at Lehigh University. 
 
 Dr. Bocchini served as Principal Investigator of the PRAISys project, a multi-million dollar effort supported by the National Science Foundation that involved 58 scholars (43% from underrepresented groups in STEM) over 5 years to model and predict in a probabilistic sense the damage, recovery, and resilience of interdependent infrastructure systems. Dr. Bocchini was elected Fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE, he authored the chapter on infrastructure interdependencies in the Objective Resilience Manual of Practice of ASCE, served in the committee of the National Academies to develop guidelines for the U.S. Congress to allocate resources to projects that improve transportation resilience, and received a number of awards and recognitions. 

Some additional projects related to past research topics involve advanced techniques for the simulation of random functions; structural identification and damage detection in truss structures and in pipelines for oil and gas; 3D printing of concrete by selective binder activation; numerical tools for non-destructive testing by means of guided ultrasonic waves; stochastic finite element methods; advanced rheological models and pre- post-processing tools for ceramic materials.

Additional information is available on the website of Dr. Bocchini's research team: www.paolobocchini.com

 

Selected Publications

Paolo Bocchini, Dan M. Frangopol, Thomas Ummenhofer, Tim Zinke. Resilience and sustainability of civil infrastructure: Toward a unified approach. Journal of Infrastructure Systems, ASCE, Vol. 20, Issue 2, p. 04014004 1-16, 2014. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000177

Graziano Fiorillo, Paolo Bocchini, Javier Buceta. A predictive spatial distribution framework for filovirus-infected fruit bats. Scientific Reports, Nature, Vol. 8, Article 7970, p. 1-13, 2018. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-26074-4

Vasileios Christou, Paolo Bocchini, Manuel J. Miranda, Aman Karamlou. Effective sampling of spatially correlated intensity maps using Hazard Quantization: application to seismic events. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering, ASCE - ASME, Vol. 4, Issue 1, p. 04017035 1-13, 2017. DOI: 10.1061/AJRUA6.0000939

Aman Karamlou, Paolo Bocchini. Functionality-fragility surfaces. Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, Wiley, Vol. 46, Issue 10, p. 1687 - 1709, 2017. DOI: 10.1002/eqe.2878

Wenjuan Sun, Paolo Bocchini, Brian D. Davison. Applications of artificial intelligence for disaster management. Natural Hazards, Springer. DOI: 10.1007/s11069-020-04124-3

Liyang Ma, Paolo Bocchini, Vasileios Christou. Fragility models of electrical conductors in power transmission networks subjected to hurricanes. Structural Safety, Elsevier, Vol. 82, p. 101890 1-15, 2020. DOI: 10.1016/j.strusafe.2019.101890

Wenjuan Sun, Paolo Bocchini, Brian D. Davison. Model for estimating the impact of interdependencies on system recovery. Journal of Infrastructure Systems, ASCE, Vol. 26, Issue 3, p. 04020031 1-20, 2020. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000569

Aman Karamlou, Paolo Bocchini. From component damage to system-level probabilistic restoration functions for a damaged bridge. Journal of Infrastructure Systems, ASCE, Vol. 23, Issue 3, p. 04016042 1 - 14, 2017. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000342

Wenjuan Sun, Paolo Bocchini, Brian D. Davison. Resilience metrics and measurement methods for transportation infrastructure: The state of the art. Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, Taylor and Francis, Vol. 5, Issue 3, p. 168-199, 2020. DOI: 10.1080/23789689.2018.1448663

Liyang Ma, Paolo Bocchini. Hysteretic model of single-bolted angle connections for lattice steel towers. Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, Vol. 145, Issue 8, p. 04019052 1-16, 2019. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EM.1943-7889.0001630

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Paolo Bocchini
Paolo Bocchini
Director of Graduate Programs and Professor of Structural Engineering
Civil & Environmental Engineering
paolo.bocchini@lehigh.edu
(610) 758-3066
ATLSS Engineering Research Center
IMBT Labs 108B
117 ATLSS Drive
Bethlehem, PA 18015
More: 
Research group website: www.lehigh.edu/~pab409
Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience Center website: www.catmodeling.org

Education

Ph.D., Structural Mechanics, University of Bologna, Italy, 2008
Laurea Degree (B.Sc. + M.Sc.), Civil Engineering, University of Bologna, Italy, 2004

Areas of Research

Distributed Infrastructure, Maintenance, Management and Performance Assessment of Bridge Networks, Disaster Management and Resilience of the Infrastructure, Computational Mechanics, Computational Stochastic Mechanics, Random Processes and Fields in Mechanics, Stochastic Finite Elements, Probabilistic Structural Analysis, Structural Identification and Damage Detection, Infrastructure Hazard Mitigation, Life Cycle of Structural Systems, Structural Engineering