Dr. Hussam N. Mahmoud

George T. Abell Professor in Infrastructure and Director, Structural Laboratory

The Socio-Physical and Hazard-Integrated Environment (SoPHIE) Research Group

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Research

Dr. Mahmoud's research program is centered around Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure and Communities with focus on three major thrusts including:

1) Quantifying community resilience with focus on recovery of social institutions and critical infrastructure following extreme events.
2) Assessing building damage and developing new structural systems subjected to extreme single and multiple hazards.
3) Evaluating, Inspecting, and Managing deteriorated infrastructure within the context of life-cycle analysis.

In our research we embrace multi-disciplinary approaches to account for socio-economic drivers for damage and recovery for different hazards including earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, sea level rise, and flood event.

Resilient Communities
Under this thrust, we focus on:

- Developing socio-technical models to predict recovery of communities following extreme single and multiple hazards.

- Predicting the recovery of functionality of social institutions with focus on healthcare systems and schools as predictive measures of social services stability.

- Understanding the role of urbanization and population growth in managing risk for different natural disasters with focus on non-structural measures including land use, land cover, etc.

- Quantifying the resilience of coastal communities subjected climate change and the associated hazards.

- Linking community resilience goals to individual building performance objectives.
Single & Multi-Hazard Response
Under this thrust, we focus on:

- Predicting structural response, up to and including collapse, by integrating advanced material models with building performance analysis.

- Evaluating structural performance under extreme single and multiple hazards.

- Developing new performance-based design approaches that focus on minimum life-cycle cost.

- Devising new structural systems that require minimal effort for repair and recovery following natural disasters.

- Establishing damage and loss functions that can be used for community resilience assessment.
Deteriorated Infrastructure
Under this thrust, we focus on:

- Evaluating alternative fatigue retrofit methodologies and analysis for deteriorated bridges and hydraulic steel structure.

- Using fiber composites for repair and retrofit of steel structures in harsh environmental conditions.

- Assessing the multi-axial fatigue behavior of various structural components and systems.

- Devising new inspection and repair plans for hydraulic steel structures that are based on minimum life-cycle cost analysis.

- Quantifying the effect of deteriorated bridge joints on the life-cycle cost of steel bridges while accounting for the cost of inspection, maintenance, and repair.

Acknowledgement

We sincerely appreciate and acknowledge all funding provided by state, federal, and national agencies as well as private sectors to support the research studies. Funding sources include the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the Department of Defense, The National Institute of Standards and Technology, The Center of Excellence for Community Resilience Planning, The Colorado Department of Transportation, The U.S. Department of Transportation, The National Center for Disaster Medicine & Public Health, The Henry Jackson Foundation, Natural Hazard Center, and Prescient. Thanks are also due to all students, post-doctorate researchers, visiting scholars, and international collaborators.