We're joined by Dr. Paolo Bocchini, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lehigh University, a leading researcher  in catastrophe modeling and infrastructure resilience. Dr. Bocchini is the director of Lehigh’s Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience, and he’s spearheading a new collaboration with Rice University—the Consortium for Enhanced Resilience and Catastrophe Modeling.

In this episode, we dive into why academic and private-sector research in catastrophe risk have grown apart—and what it takes to reconnect them. We talk about multi-hazard risk, the power and limits of AI in modeling, the role of surrogate models, and how future disasters—from wildfires to earthquakes—demand new thinking.