Hiba Baroud
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering | Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN, UNITED STATES
Expert in risk, reliability and resilience of critical infrastructure against climate change and natural disasters, particularly flooding.
Spotlight
Biography
Dr. Hiba Baroud is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Littlejohn Dean's Faculty Fellow. Her work explores data analytics and statistical methods to measure and analyze the risk, reliability, and resilience in critical infrastructure systems. In particular, she has studied data-driven Bayesian methods to predict the occurrence of disruptive events in infrastructure systems and stochastically model the recovery process of the physically disrupted system as well as other interdependent and indirectly impacted systems. She also developed decision analysis tools to assess different preparedness and recovery investment strategies for the protection of civil infrastructures.
Baroud holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. She has a Master of Mathematics from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo where she focused in her research on the application of statistics, particularly time series models, to analyze Dr. Hiba Baroud is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Littlejohn Dean's Faculty Fellow. Her work explores data analytics and statistical methods to measure and analyze the risk, reliability, and resilience in critical infrastructure systems. In particular, she has studied data-driven Bayesian methods to predict the occurrence of disruptive events in infrastructure systems and stochastically model the recovery process of the physically disrupted system as well as other interdependent and indirectly impacted systems. She also developed decision analysis tools to assess different preparedness and recovery investment strategies for the protection of civil infrastructures.
Dr. Baroud holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. She has a Master of Mathematics from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo where she focused in her research on the application of statistics, particularly time series models, to analyze financial data. Prior to that, she obtained her B.S. in Actuarial Science from Notre Dame University, Lebanon.
Areas of Expertise (12)
Climate Change
Flood Mitigation
Natural Disasters
Resilience Modeling
Interdependent Systems Data Analytics
Critical Infrastructure Modeling
Risk Analysis
Risk-informed decision analysis
Statistical Modeling
Climate and Climate Change
Disaster Recovery
Flooding
Accomplishments (3)
Fall 2019 Chancellor's Public Voices Fellow (professional)
A semester-long program designed to expand Vanderbilt University’s global reach by amplifying the impact of faculty academic research.
Best Paper Award in the Homeland Security Track
Best Paper Award in the Homeland Security Track of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Conference.
Student Merit Award
Engineering and Infrastructure Specialty Group of the Society for Risk Analysis
Education (3)
University of Oklahoma: Ph.D.
University of Waterloo: M.Math.
Notre Dame University: B.S.
Affiliations (6)
- American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
- Society for Risk Analysis (SRA)
- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
- International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
- Institute for Industrial Engineers (IIE)
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Links (4)
Selected Media Appearances (10)
Dams in distress: Partial failure in Minnesota offers a nationwide warning
NBC News online
2024-06-29
Hiba Baroud, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, said the Rapidan’s partial failure, among others, should prompt lawmakers to take a hard look at how to bolster dam infrastructure and triage repairs. “We really need to think proactively to project potential scenarios for all the dams in the U.S. and start prioritizing which dams need to be rehabilitated or upgraded to avoid a situation like this,” she said, “as opposed to witnessing a big event and using it as a wake-up call about this particular dam.”
How the Midwest Floods Nearly Took Out a Century-Old Dam
The New York Times online
2024-06-25
“It’s the perfect storm, because we are dealing with more severe extreme weather events, and because it’s just the nature of time these dams are getting older,” said Hiba Baroud, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University.
Nigeria was already facing a food crisis – then flooding hit
The Telegraph online
2022-10-25
Hiba Baroud, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, said: “[Food insecurity] is already an existing problem and so having the floodwater submerge all this farmland will lead to a major loss of food production for this season and also for future seasons.
Nigeria's flooding spreads to the Delta, upending lives and livelihoods
Reuters online
2022-10-20
"Climate change is playing a big role in this," said Hiba Baroud, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. "But the other component is...the vulnerability of the infrastructure. This is how we end up in a disaster like this one."
Three Ways to Build Back Smarter After Hurricane Ian
The New York Times
2022-10-03
Yet future resilience will very likely require a combination of both hard and soft shoreline defenses, said Hiba Baroud, who teaches civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University.
How Government Decisions Left Tennessee Exposed to Deadly Flooding
New York Times online
2021-08-26
“These extreme weather events will become more intense and more frequent,” said Hiba Baroud, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who specializes in resilience. “We need to be more proactive, and think about ways to prevent or at least mitigate the impact of these events.”
In aftermath of devastating floods, Germans wonder what more could have been done
The Washington Post online
2021-07-20
Hiba Baroud, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, said that early-warning systems and evacuation plans are “crucial” to saving lives during extreme weather events, especially storms and floods, but they need to constantly evolve.
More dams will collapse as aging infrastructure can’t keep up with climate change
CNBC online
2020-05-21
“A lot of the country’s infrastructure systems were built during a time when these kind of weather events were considered rare and didn’t present a significant threat,” said Hiba Baroud, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University.
‘Everything is gone’: Japan left reeling from worst storm in decades
The Independent online
2019-10-19
“Economic impact in disasters can quickly cascade through different sectors of the economy,” says Hiba Baroud, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. “Production can be affected either by direct impact from the disaster or through interdependent effects resulting from disruptions in the supply chain. “Local and national authorities need to account for all these aspects in assessing the damage to identify the best recovery strategy for the city.”
Japan Questions Flooding Defenses After Severe Weekend Typhoon
The Wall Street Journal online
2019-10-15
“Warmer ocean temperatures and higher sea level are expected to intensify the impact of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons,” said Hiba Baroud, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. She said, however, that researchers don’t know yet whether the number of hurricanes is increasing.
Selected Articles (3)
Selecting indicators for assessing community sustainable resilience
Risk AnalysisLeslie Gillespie‐Marthaler, Katherine Nelson, Hiba Baroud, Mark Abkowitz
2019 "Communities are complex systems subject to a variety of hazards that can result in significant disruption to critical functions. Community resilience assessment is rapidly gaining popularity as a means to help communities better prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruption."
A Bayesian kernel approach to modeling resilience-based network component importance
ElsevierHiba Baroud and Kash Barker
2018 "The resilience of infrastructure networks is an increasingly important consideration in infrastructure planning and risk management. One aspect of resilience-based planning is determining which components in the network are most important to the resilience of the network."
Static and Dynamic Resource Allocation Models for Recovery of Interdependent Systems: Application to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Annals of Operations ResearchMacKenzie, C. A., Baroud, H., & Barker, K.
2016 "Determining where and when to invest resources during and after a disruption can challenge policy makers and homeland security officials. Two decision models, one static and one dynamic, are proposed to determine the optimal resource allocation to facilitate the recovery of impacted industries after a disruption where the objective is to minimize the production losses due to the disruption."
