Elhami-Khorasani showcases research expertise at various national and international conferences

By Ashley Popp

In May, Elhami-Khorasani was a featured panelist in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) workshop for the Committee on Hazard Mitigation and Resilience Applied Research. The workshop’s theme was compounding and cascading events, and Elhami-Khorasani was a contributor to Panel 1: Towards a better understanding of cascading and compounding disasters: characterizing drivers, systems, and relationships. This talk focused on the impacts of cascading hazards, such as fires following earthquake and post-wildfire flooding. A recording of the workshop, including Elhami-Khorasani’s presentation is available at this link. 

Elhami-Khorasani discussed an NSF-funded project on modeling damage to communities from wildfires at the California Fire Science Seminar Series, an event held by the California Fire Science Consortium. The talk, titled Structural damage from wildfires in wildland-urban interface communities is available here. During the discussion, Elhami-Khorasani highlighted the work she and her Ph.D. student Fernando Szasdi-Bardales are doing on simulating the spatial and temporal behavior of fire inside communities to assess vulnerabilities and the drivers of loss in communities. 

In June, Elhami-Khorasani spoke at a seminar series organized by the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) Student Chapter of the University of Queensland in Australia. Her talk focusing on the topic of Enhancing the resilience of tunnels subject to fire is available at this link. In a collaborative research study performed by Elhami-Khorasani and Associate Professor Anthony Tessari, this project investigates the structural performance of reinforced concrete tunnel liners during and after a fire and establishes post-fire damage assessment procedures. Their work has been supported by the CAIT Region 2 UTC Consortium and the Institute of Bridge Engineering at the University at Buffalo.

Concluding the summer of 2022, Elhami-Khorasani was invited to present at the 4^th Kenji Ishihara Colloquium Series on Earthquake Engineering organized by the Earth Engineering Research Institute (EERI) San Diego Regional Chapter. Her presentation titled, Planning for fire following earthquake considering interconnected infrastructure systems, focused on a decision-making algorithm to guide the response of fire departments to locations of ignition considering available resources, damage to the transportation network, and the likelihood of fire spread. The event centered on the Impact of Climate Change on Community Earthquake Resilience and a video of the presentations will be available to EERI members, but further information on the series and its presenters can be viewed here.