Wei Zhang, Ph.D., associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, University of Connecticut

Having lived in coastal areas all his life, Wei Zhang understands the power of the ocean. Coastal regions — where more than 50% of Americans live — are experiencing more hazards from hurricanes, winter storms, and flooding than ever before.

“Extreme weather events have resulted in more damage, more frequent storms, and more extreme storms,” Zhang says. “We are experiencing stronger wind, more precipitation, and higher water levels.”

Currently an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut, Zhang started his career building large bridges and offshore structures, where wind and water stresses can be extreme.  

Coming from a long line of teachers, Zhang says it felt natural to move into a professor role at UConn. He loves working with his students, including graduate students, undergrads, and even high school students — fostering their passion for engineering and preparing for climate change.

His lab at UConn focuses on damage modeling and disaster mitigation, specifically the impacts of extreme weather events on civil infrastructure, to improve the resiliency of Connecticut’s coastal communities.

Zhang recently published a paper in Engineering Structures outlining a new model to predict tsunami damage in Fairfield Beach, Conn. This small coastal town doesn’t get tsunamis, but hurricanes have caused significant damage in recent years.

“Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy created a lot of flooding in Fairfield Beach,” Zhang says. “Many community residents had not had such experiences before and they did not realize such things could happen to them. Without water and power for days, they were not ready for those kinds of extreme events.” 

Zhang’s model uses the age of buildings — considering their building types, construction materials, and methods — to determine how likely they are to fail. The model then incorporates the debris from those buildings into the damage that the storm can do. One falling building can have a landslide effect, creating debris that can impact the stability of other structures. Incorporating community damage from debris increased the failure rate of Fairfield Beach’s buildings by 22%.

“The resilience of your home is not just about your home, and also about your neighbors’,” Zhang says. “We’re trying to understand damages not just on the individual building level, but at the community level, how these damages can compound.”

These kinds of models, he says, could be adapted by other communities to assess their vulnerability to extreme weather events, helping communities decide how to invest in resilience and planning.

“We can use this method for other communities if data is available,” Zhang says. “The community can, based on their specific conditions, make their own decisions on how to move forward.”