Omar Kammouh- PhD
- Professor (Assistant) at Delft University of Technology
Omar Kammouh
- PhD
- Professor (Assistant) at Delft University of Technology
Researcher & lecturer | Infrastructure resilience & optimization | Complex systems modeling | Matlab/Python enthusiast
About
82
Publications
38,076
Reads
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1,220
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Introduction
Critical infrastructures are highly interconnected and their management can purposely contribute to the sustainable development and well-being of our communities. My research focuses on infrastructure resilience and optimization in a cross-sectoral and multi-actor setting. I especially enjoy modeling complex adaptive systems, like infrastructure. I also support the development of guidelines and solutions to apply responsive innovations. Reach out to me and I will be glad to chat with you!
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2021 - December 2021
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Research topic: interdependent infrastructure design and management in the (built) environment using data-driven methods
January 2021 - February 2021
4TU Centre for Resilience Engineering
Position
- Research Associate
Description
- Position: research fellow at the 4TU Centre for Resilience Engineering under the 4TU.DeSIRE programme. Topic: Infrastructure resilience and interdependency modeling. The 4TU.DeSIRE programme and the 4TU.RE Centre aim to establish and foster an international network of top-level academic scholars, engineers, practitioners and decision-makers who serve as ambassadors of the RE paradigm. For more information visit www.4tu.nl/resilience
July 2019 - November 2021
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- My research focused on pratical infrastructure design, maintainability, and restoration. The research was conducted with collaboration with six infrastructure operators in the Netherlands
Education
September 2013 - July 2015
September 2008 - July 2013
Publications
Publications (82)
The functioning of infrastructure networks is vital for modern communities. Maintenance should be planned to ensure infrastructure's functionality and safety at the lowest cost. Interconnected infrastructure networks can affect each other's functionality, and maintenance on one network can impact the serviceability of others. Planned intervention g...
In August 2020, a massive explosion at the Beirut port shocked Lebanon. The blast is attributed to improperly stored ammonium nitrate, resulting in extensive damage to large parts of the city, significant loss of life, physical destruction, and disruptions across multiple sectors. This event once again emphasized the distinction between risk and re...
The ability of a community to respond effectively to emergencies is closely linked to the wellbeing of its infrastructure. Many global infrastructures are outdated, making them particularly vulnerable to natural disasters like earthquakes. In this context, this paper introduces a simulation-based approach to measure and improve the resilience of la...
This research critically examines the state of scientific consensus in the multidisciplinary field of resilience, a topic that has attracted increasing attention across various domains due to escalating societal and ecological challenges. The diversity of definitions, perspectives, and approaches within the field has resulted in a complex landscape...
Strategies to improve regional resilience rely on two key modeling components: predictive models for post-disaster infrastructure recovery and prescriptive models for logistics support. Predictive models encompass physical recovery modeling, coordinating geographically distributed recovery activities, and service recovery modeling, translating comp...
As modern societies become increasingly dependent on infrastructure systems, ensuring their functionality is paramount. Current simulation-based approaches for evaluating infrastructure wellbeing and resilience are known to be complex and time-consuming, making them unfeasible for practical applications. Indicators-based methods have been proposed...
Construction schedule changes can negatively influence the probability of projects' timely completion. Normally, a manual trial-and-error probabilistic approach is then conducted to find a set of corrective measures to again arrive at the required completion date given a certain probability level. These measures are then all implemented as schedule...
Infrastructure systems are the cornerstone of the economic prosperity and well-being of societies. The Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN recognize the importance of designing resilient infrastructure in a sustainable manner, especially during the upcoming energy transitions and sustainable development challenges we are facing. Durin...
The well-being of modern societies depends on the functioning of their infrastructure networks. During their service lives, infrastructure networks are subject to different stresses (e.g., deterioration, hazards, etc.). Interventions are performed to ensure the continuous fulfillment of the infrastructure's functional goals. To guarantee a high lev...
Construction project management requires dynamic mitigation control to ensure a project's timely completion. Current mitigation approaches are usually performed by an iterative Monte Carlo (MC) analysis which does not reflect (1) the project manager's goal-oriented behavior, (2) contractual project completion performance schemes, and (3) stochastic...
Construction project management requires dynamic mitigation control ensuring the project's timely completion by a best fit for common purpose strategy for all stakeholders. Current mitigation approaches are usually performed by an iterative Monte Carlo (MC) analysis focussing on lowest-cost strategies which do not include (1) the project manager's...
Changes in a construction project schedule can impact the project’s planned duration, resulting in penalties. A manual trial-and-error probabilistic approach is usually conducted to find an appropriate set of corrective measures to mitigate delays of the overall project. However, this approach does not capture the actual goal-oriented behavior of p...
The multitude of uncertainties of both natural and man-made disasters have prompted an increased attention in resilience engineering and disaster management. To overcome the effects of disastrous events, such as economic and social effects, modern communities need to be resilient. Natural disasters are unpredictable and unavoidable. While it is not...
Due to the increasing frequency of natural and man-made disasters, the scientific community has paid considerable attention to the concept of resilience engineering. On the other hand, authorities and decision-makers have been focusing their efforts on developing strategies that can help increase community resilience to different types of extreme e...
Due to the increasing frequency of natural and man-made disasters worldwide, the scientific community has paid considerable attention to the concept of resilience engineering in recent years. Authorities and decision-makers, on the other hand, have been focusing their efforts to develop strategies that can help increase community resilience to diff...
This chapter introduces the role of machine learning (ML) in resilience engineering and discusses actual cases of emergencies in which ML contributed positively. To identify its benefits within the resilience-relevant aspects (social, economic, infrastructural, institutional, environmental, and communitywise), the role of ML in various disaster man...
The wellbeing of modern societies is dependent upon the functioning of their infrastructure networks. This paper introduces the 3C concept, an integrative multi-system and multi-stakeholder optimization approach for managing infrastructure interventions (e.g., maintenance, renovation, etc.). The proposed approach takes advantage of the benefits ach...
Community and infrastructure resilience against natural and man-made hazards is paramount for the well-being of modern societies. To adapt to the fast-changing world, having communities that can effectively respond to the continuously changing (physical and social) environment is essential. Despite the existing literature on resilience definition a...
Critical infrastructures are an integral part of our society and economy. Services like gas supply or water networks are expected to be available at all times since a service failure may incur catastrophic consequences to the public health, safety, and financial capacity of the society. Several resilience strategies have been examined to reduce dis...
Probabilistic Monte-Carlo simulations are often used to determine the project's completion time given a required probability level. During project execution, schedule changes negatively affect the probability of meeting the project's completion time. A manual trial and error approach is then conducted to find a set of mitigation measures to again a...
The wellbeing of modern societies is dependent upon the functioning of their infrastructure networks. This paper introduces the 3C concept, an integrative multi-system and multi-stakeholder optimization approach for managing infrastructure interventions (e.g., maintenance, renovation, etc.). The proposed approach takes advantage of the benefits ach...
Natural and human-made disasters can disrupt infrastructures even if they are designed to be hazard resistant. While the occurrence of hazards can only be predicted to some extent, their impact can be managed by increasing the emergency response and reducing the vulnerability of infrastructure. In the context of risk management, the ability of infr...
Due to the increasing frequency of disastrous events, the challenge of creating large-scale simulation models has become of major significance. Indeed, several simulation strategies and methodologies have been recently developed to explore the response of communities to natural disasters. Such models can support decision-makers during emergency ope...
The capacity of a community to react to and resist during an emergency situation is highly related to the proper functioning of its infrastructure systems. Improving the infrastructure response and recovery capacity through management and adaptation strategies can help increase community resilience. Infrastructural assets are considered outdated in...
The capacity of a community to react to and resist during an emergency situation is highly related to the proper functioning of its infrastructure systems. Improving infrastructure response and recovery capacity through management and adaptation strategies can help increase community resilience. Infrastructural assets are considered outdated in alm...
Resilience indicators are a convenient tool to assess the resilience of engineering systems. They are often used in preliminary designs or in the assessment of complex systems. This paper introduces a novel approach to assess the time-dependent resilience of engineering systems using resilience indicators. A Bayesian network (BN) approach is employ...
Availability of resources is one of the primary criteria for communities to attain a high resilience level during disaster events. This paper introduces a new approach to evaluate resourcefulness at the community and national scales. Resourcefulness is calculated using a proposed composite resourcefulness index, which is a combination of several re...
Construction Management and Engineering students need to acquire managing skills for solving real-world problems that are complex, rarely straightforward and lack ‘one right answer’. For this, they need to become ‘open designers’, capable to be reflective, integrative and creative in and on action with dynamic and new situations. In this paper, the...
The efficient movement of goods is crucial to the economic growth of communities. This makes the existence of seaports essential for the marine transportation system. Due to their natural location, ports are continuously threatened by natural hazards such as wind action. The work presented here aims at assessing the resilience of ports against extr...
Recent natural and man-made disasters (e.g. earthquake, tsunami or floods) have induced increased attention in quantification of their impact on residential buildings, which are designed to withstand damage through their elastic and plastic deformations. The damage can make the buildings to be unsafe, and consequently unoccupied for a period of tim...
Sensor-enabled infrastructure systems are destined to empower resilient communities with more intelligence and sustainability, and therefore enhance the operational safety of physical infrastructure. Through online and onboard monitoring, the infrastructure components incorporating appropriate analytic and predictive modeling tool not only provides...
The primary objective of the Performance-Based Seismic Design (PBSD) is to provide stipulated seismic performances for building structures. However, a certain degree of design freedom is needed for matching a specific seismic response. This design freedom is not obtainable by the conventional lateral resisting systems because their stiffness and st...
Community resilience is becoming a growing concern for authorities and decision makers. Resilience is the ability to withstand stress, survive, adapt, and bounce back from a crisis or a disaster and rapidly move on. Current scientific contributions are aimed at understanding disaster resilience and finding new ways to measure it, quantitatively or...
MCEER's "4-R" approach to Resilience put a question about the quantification of Resourcefulness, which is capacity to identify problems, establish priorities, allocate and mobilize resources before, during and after an event that threaten to disrupt some element, system, or other unit of analysis. Since there are no attempts in literature to quanti...
Resilience indicators are a convenient tool to assess the resilience of engineering systems. They are often used in preliminary designs or in the assessment of complex systems. This paper introduces a novel approach to assess the time-dependent resilience of engineering systems using resilience indicators. The temporal dimension is tackled in this...
Natural and man-made disasters have caused a significant impact on residential buildings worldwide. The damaged buildings stay unoccupiable for a period of time, called the downtime. This chapter introduces a new methodology to predict the downtime and the resilience of building structures using Fuzzy logic. Generally, the downtime can be divided i...
The multiple uncertainties of both natural and man-made disasters have prompted increased attention in the topic of resilience engineering. In this paper, an indicator-based method for measuring urban community resilience is proposed. The method is based on the PEOPLES framework, which is a hierarchical framework for defining disaster resilience of...
Residential buildings are designed to withstand earthquake damage through their elastic and plastic deformations. The damage causes the buildings to be unoccupiable for a period of time, called the downtime. This paper introduces a method to predict the downtime of buildings using a Fuzzy logic hierarchical scheme. Generally, downtime is divided in...
Cyber-security is of paramount importance: there is an industry built around it, with people spending their lives securing systems, and other people spending theirs trying to get into those very same systems. It is a never-ending process that requires both parties to always think ahead of the opponent and, as time passes, the stakes get higher and...
This paper provides an empirical probabilistic model for estimating the downtime of lifelines following earthquakes. Generally, the downtime of infrastructure varies according to several factors, including the characteristics of the exposed structure, the earthquake intensity, and the amount of available human resources. Having so many variables ma...
Infrastructure systems are crucial for the development of communities as they provide essential services to the habitants. To improve the resilience of such systems, their intrinsic properties need to be understood and their resilience state needs be identified. In the literature, several methods to evaluate networks' reliability and resilience can...
Recent social developments and economic transformation have changed the engineering design approach from building design level towards community design level (city, region, country). The latter approach involves modeling of interconnections between different systems (buildings, transportation, water network, etc.) rather than designing the building...
The efficient movement of goods is crucial to the economic growth of communities. This makes the existence of seaports essential for the marine transportation system. Due to their natural location, ports are continuously threatened by natural hazards such as wind action, which necessitates a continuous monitoring and assessment for their performanc...
To improve the resilience of critical infrastructure systems, their intrinsic properties need to be understood and their resilience state needs to be identified. In the literature, several methods to evaluate networks’ reliability and resilience can be found. However, the applicability of these methods is usually restricted to small-size networks....
Last decades have been characterized by an increasing number of disasters all over the world. Therefore, the concept of community resilience has attracted the attention of the scientists who started to explore and assess the ability of communities to recover after undesirable events. In this work, a method for assessing the earthquake community res...
The efficient movement of goods is crucial to the economic growth of communities. This makes the existence of seaports essential for the marine transportation system. Due to their natural location, ports are continuously threatened by natural hazards such as wind action, which necessitates a continuous monitoring and assessment for their performanc...
Recent social developments and economic transformation have changed the engineering design approach from building design level towards community design level (city, region, country). The latter approach involves modeling of interconnections between different systems (buildings, transportation, water network, etc.) rather than designing the building...
The 14th of November 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake sequence has highly affected the transport infrastructure in New Zealand. From the perspective of life-safety, the overall bridge performance was satisfactory; however, based on the observed undesirable sub-system performance of the damaged bridges, further investigation into possible improvements of th...
Last decades have been characterized by an increasing number of disasters all over the world. Therefore, the concept of community resilience has attracted the attention of the scientists who started to explore and assess the ability of communities to recover after undesirable events. In this work, a method for assessing the earthquake community res...
To improve the resilience of critical infrastructure systems, their intrinsic properties need to be understood and their resilience state needs be identified. In the literature, several methods to evaluate net-works’ reliability and resilience can be found. However, the applicability of these methods is usually restricted to small-size networks. In...
The 14th of November 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake sequence has highly affected the transport infrastructure in New Zealand. From the perspective of life-safety, the overall bridge performance was satisfactory; however, based on the observed undesirable sub-system performance of the damaged bridges, further investigation into possible improvements of th...
![Figure 6: Pipe break simulation in EPANET 2.0 [24].](profile/Omar-Kammouh-2/publication/330840619/figure/fig2/AS:732412946419713@1551632262213/Pipe-break-simulation-in-EPANET-20-24_Q320.jpg)
The capacity of a community to react and resist to an emergency situation is strictly related to the proper functioning of its own infrastructure systems. This paper proposes a simulation oriented approach to evaluate the resilience of large scale water distribution networks. The case study used in this research is the water network of a large scal...
Measuring community resilience has been an exploding field of inquiry in the last decade. Many options for measuring resilience ranging from specific measurements to frameworks can be found in literature. Among the different options available, indicators are perceived as an important instrument to assess the resilience of communities due to the sim...
The effects of the rapid urbanization and new hazards related to climate change are becoming extremely complex and unpredictable. Communities are thus seeking to improve their recovery capacity after catastrophic events through management and adaptation strategies. Generally, existing infrastructures have been built before the preparation of the se...
Multi-hazard engineering is increasingly recognized as a serious worldwide concern. In this paper, the principle of multi-hazard is applied to an essential steel structure (a hospital) located in California, US. The studied structure is assumed to be exposed to a sequence of three different cascading hazards (earthquake, blast, and fire). First, no...
This work aims at establishing laboratory requirements and testing conditions in order to understand the physical and emotional stability of people during a ground shaking. Several individuals with different human characteristics (gender, age, height, etc.) are considered in the test. Two different laboratory setups are presented. A position device...
Modeling the performance of critical infrastructures and their interdependencies is an important task in the resilience assessment. In this paper, restoration curves for four critical lifelines (power, water, gas, telecommunication, and transportation) have been developed using a probabilistic approach. To do that, a large database on infrastructur...
This paper introduces a new methodology to evaluate the resilience of communities. The methodology is based on the PEOPLES framework and it makes use of resilience indicators to evaluate community resilience. The methodology requires data for the indicators as input and returns a resilience function as an output. The resilience function shows the s...
The loss of functionality of road networks during the past Canterbury (2010-2011) and Kaikōura (2016) earthquakes has questioned New Zealand's established seismic resilience. In both events, overall bridge performance was satisfactory from a life-safety perspective. However, based on the observed undesirable subsystem performance of the damaged bri...
This paper presents a new methodology to predict the potential damage and physical impacts of an earthquake on the built environment. A new methodology to the urbanized systems and large-scale simulations within a seismic scenario are explored, by evaluating multipurpose codes for numerical simulation. A 3-D building shape of a standard virtual cit...
The paper provides a web tool to quantitatively assess the resilience of communities at various scales (http://borispio.ddns.net/PEOPLES/login.php). The tool is based on the PEOPLES framework and it takes an indicator-based approach as an engine for its algorithm. PEOPLES is a framework for identifying the different resilience aspects of a communit...
This paper presents a new approach to predict the potential damage and physical impacts of an earthquake on the built environment. A new methodology to the urbanized systems and large-scale simulations within a seismic scenario are explored, by evaluating multipurpose codes for numerical simulation. A 3-D building shape of a standard virtual city i...
Infrastructure systems are crucial for the development of communities because they provide essential services to the habitants. Here we focus on the transportation network, which is designed to provide a continuous service to the community. Due to its decisive role in the economy, governments and policy makers have been investing in developing stra...
Community resilience is becoming a growing concern for authorities and decision-makers. This paper 8 introduces two indicator-based methods to evaluate the resilience of communities based on the PEOPLES 9 framework. PEOPLES is a multi-layered framework that defines community resilience using seven 10 dimensions. Each of the dimensions is described...
This paper presents a quantitative method to assess the resilience and the resilience-based risk at the country level. The approach is inspired by the classical risk analysis, in which risk is a function of vulnerability, hazard, and exposure. In the proposed analysis, resilience-based risk is a function of resilience, hazard, and exposure. In the...
The primary objective of the “performance-based seismic design” is to provide stipulated seismic performances for building structures. However, a certain degree of design freedom is needed for matching a specific seismic response. This design freedom is not obtainable by the conventional lateral resisting systems because their stiffness and strengt...
Community Resilience has gained a significant attention due to the recent unexpected natural and man-made disasters. Resilience is the process of maintaining livable conditions in the event of interruptions in normally available services. Estimating the resilience of systems, ranging from individuals to communities, is a formidable task due to the...
The capacity of a community to react and resist to an emergency is strictly related to the proper functioning of its own infrastructure systems. Nodal infrastructure systems, like ports, provide essential services for modern societies. Seaports are critical engineering systems that provide continuous economic activities. Because of their natural lo...
This paper presents a new approach to predict the potential damage and physical impacts of an earthquake on the built environment. A new methodology to the urbanized systems and large-scale simulations within a seismic scenario are explored, by evaluating multipurpose codes for numerical simulation. A 3-D building shape of a standard virtual city i...
In recent years, the concept of resilience has been introduced to the field of engineering as it
relates to disaster mitigation and management. However, the built environment is only one
element that supports community functionality. Maintaining community functionality during and
after a disaster, defined as resilience, is influenced by multiple co...
This research presents a quantitative method to assess resilience at the state level. The approach introduced in this work is an evolution of the risk assessment concept. Risk is mainly a function of vulnerability, hazard, and exposure; on the other hand, resilience focuses more on the internal characteristics of a system rather than its vulnerabil...
In recent years, the concept of resilience has been introduced to the field of engineering as it relates to disaster mitigation and management. However, the built environment is only one element that supports community functionality. Maintaining community functionality during and after a disaster, defined as resilience, is influenced by multiple co...
Estimating the downtime of infrastructures following a disastrous event is one of the most important, yet uncertain aspects in the resilience evaluation process. This paper proposes an empirical probabilistic model for estimating the downtime of life-lines following earthquakes. First, a large database has been collected from a wide range of litera...
-Developing a complete indicator-based approach for measuring resilience at the community level; -Developing a time dependent approach rather than the existing static approach (snapshot) to assess resilience; -Obtain a reliable method to compare resilience among different communities.
![Figure 2-The geometric configuration of the studied device [8]](profile/Omar-Kammouh-2/publication/316140957/figure/fig1/AS:650039605076015@1531992927711/The-geometric-configuration-of-the-studied-device-8_Q320.jpg)
The design of building structures that is capable of providing prescribed seismic performances is the fundamental objective of the Performance-Based Seismic Design (PBSD) approach. Matching a particular seismic response requires additional design freedom that the conventional structural elements (beam/column) fail to provide. Here, it is worth to h...
![Fig. 3-Evaluating resilience as introduced in [11]](profile/Omar-Kammouh-2/publication/316141093/figure/fig1/AS:546515817304064@1507310932881/Evaluating-resilience-as-introduced-in-11_Q320.jpg)
This paper presents a new methodology for computing community resilience. This topic has gained attention quickly due to the recent unexpected natural and man-made disasters; nevertheless, measuring resilience is still one of the most challenging tasks due to the complexity involved in the process. In previous studies, several attempts have been ma...
extended abstract: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/146996757.pdf#page=43
PEOPLES provides the basis for development of quantitative and qualitative models that measure continuously the functionality and resilience of communities against extreme events or disasters. Over the longer term, this framework will enable the development of geospatial and...
This paper presents an analytical approach to assessing the resilience of communities and states based on the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA). The United Nations (UN) through their advancements in the Disaster Risk Reduction have released multiple international blueprints to help build the resilience of nations and communities, among which we ment...
Generally, existing structures do not satisfy the current design codes, nor do they fulfil the performance objectives under rare ground motion levels. This poses the necessity of controlling such structures, as the risk they impose is high. Among different solutions, we present an application of an innovative energy dissipation device, namely Cresc...
This paper presents an analytical approach to evaluate the level of post-disaster adaptation (Bounce-Back) of communities based on their resilience. While resilience is the intrinsic characteristics of a system, adaptation considers external agents in its assessment. The presented work is to some extent a parallelism to the risk assessment concept....
Questions
Questions (3)
I would like to see the collapse mechanism of a bridge (i.e. the distribution if debris after the collapse). Is there a software that can do that?
In addition, I learned that Midas software is the best software when it comes to bridge design and analysis (is that true?) but I am not sure if it shows the collapse mechanism after failure point..
Should I insert a book in research gate as chapters or as a whole book if I am an author in all chapters? It seems that the RG score would rocket if the book is inserted as separated chapter. Anyone?
I have come across the RG profiles of two researchers in almost the same field. The first one has a 6 publications (5 of which are journal articles) with 7 citations and slightly over 100 views, while the second has 19 publications (4 of which are journal articles) with 15 citations and 1400 views. how is it possible that the first one has a RG score higher than 9 while the second researcher has RG score less than 6 ? I could find no explanation for this!
