Seminar: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A graph-based approach for natural hazard risk assessment"
Dr. Marcello Arosio (IUSS Pavia)
SUMMARY
Assessing the risk of complex systems to natural hazards is an important but challenging problem. In today's intricate socio-technological world, characterized by strong urbanization and technological trends, the connections and interdependencies between exposed elements are crucial. These complex relationships call for a paradigm shift in collective risk assessments, from a reductionist approach to a holistic one. Most commonly, the risk of a system is estimated through a reductionist approach, based on the sum of the risk evaluated individually at each of its elements. In contrast, a holistic approach considers the whole system to be a unique entity of interconnected elements, where those connections are taken into account in order to assess risk more thoroughly. To support this paradigm shift, Dr Marcello Arosio proposes a holistic approach to analyze risk in complex systems based on the construction and study of a graph, the mathematical structure to model connections between elements. Case studies related to flood risk will be presented.
Biograhpy
Dr Marcello Arosio is an Assistant Professor in flood risk assessment at IUSS University in Pavia, specializing in disaster risk assessment with 12 years of expertise in climate-related natural hazards. His professional experience covers civil and water engineering, climate-proofing infrastructure, climate risk management, and academic research in water risk assessment. He holds a PhD in Understanding and Managing Extremes and has served as a UN Specialist in Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction at UNDP Vietnam. He has also worked as an Engineer-Risk Assessment for RIMES in Thailand, focusing on extreme weather risks related to climate change. His contributions include authoring the Technical-Organizational Guidelines for a local Civil Protection system in Italy and being actively involved in the MEDiate European research project.
If you'd like to schedule a meeting with Marcello, please contact Maria Pregnolato (m.pregnolato@tudelft.nl); he is available from October 14th to 23rd.