Dr Marianna Loli
Biography
Dr Marianna Loli has 12 years' experience in engineering practice and project management, having worked as coordinator of research projects at Grid-Engineers and as a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens.Her research couples novel simulation tools with state-of-the-art physical modelling techniques for the assessment of geohazard effects and the effective protection of critical infrastructure. She is the co-author of 13 papers in international refereed journals and over 30 publications in conference proceedings. Marianna has participated in 10 major European research projects stepping-up her career ladder by undertaking duties as a researcher, senior investigator and recently as a principal investigator. In parallel with her doctoral and post-doctoral research activity, she has been involved as junior and senior engineer in consulting projects involving geotechnical and earthquake engineering, vulnerability and seismic risk assessment and resilience-based design of various types of infrastructure. Just recently she was awarded a H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (ReBounce project, 2020) aiming to develop an integrated risk and resilience assessment framework for flood-critical bridges and the associated transport networks. She participates in the Innovation Center on Natural Hazards & Infrastructure and is a member of the organizing committee of the International Conference on Natural Hazards & Infrastructure ICONHIC.
Research
Research interests
Earthquake and geotechnical engineering;
Geohazard mitigation;
Risk assessment of infrastructure assets and networks;
Numerical modelling;
Physical model testing
Research projects
Bridges are key assets of transport networks, a pylon for the society and its economic growth. Flooding associated actions, especially scour, are the leading cause of bridge failure worldwide. Exacerbated by climate change, bridge failures induce fatalities and traffic disruptions with severe economic and societal consequences. To date, the lack of fragility functions and recovery models has prevented the development of a reliable framework for risk and resilience assessment of bridges exposed to hydraulic hazards. As a result, network operators are unable to prioritize restoration and allocate resources objectively and systematically.
The ultimate goal of ReBounce is to fill this important capability gap by delivering an integrated framework for the quantification of risk and resilience of flood-critical bridges and the associated transport networks upon which they reside. ReBounce will employ thorough hazard mapping in conjunction with sophisticated vulnerability modelling and novel multi-parameter damage recovery functions to deliver a reliable and dynamic assessment framework useful for risk management and investment decision-making. This will be tested on two different road networks in France and in the UK to provide recommendations for enhanced resilience at network level.
The research work will be carried out by Dr Marianna Loli supervised by Dr Stergios A. Mitoulis and Dr Sotiris Argyroudis. Case studies will be analyzed with support from the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFSTTAR) and JBA. The project is part of infrastructuResilience: http://www.infrastructuresilience.com/
My publications
Publications
[Display omitted] •Novel traffic reinstatement and capacity restoration models for scour-damaged bridges.•Standardisation of damage per bridge component and functionality of scoured bridges.•High uncertainty in restoration task duration, dependencies and overlaps.•Duration of restoration tasks is twice the duration of functionality reinstatement.•Recovery models validated based on documented cases of scoured bridges. Bridges are the most vulnerable assets of our transport networks. They are disproportionately exposed to and hit by multiple natural hazards, with flooding being the leading cause of bridge failures in the world. Their performance is constantly challenged by the combined effects of natural hazard stressors, e.g. flash floods, exacerbated by climate change, ageing, increasing traffic volumes and loads. Bridges are vulnerable to scour and other flood-related impacts, such as hydraulic forces and debris accumulation. In order to assess and quantify the resilience of flood-critical bridges and subsequently deploy bridge resilience models aiming at building resilience into transport networks, it is essential to use reliable fragility, capacity restoration and traffic reinstatement metrics and models. It is surprising that, despite the importance of bridges and their high vulnerability to hydraulic actions, there are no available recovery models. The latter can help quantify the pace of post-flood capacity and functionality gain for facilitating well-informed decision making for reliable prioritisation and efficient allocation of resources in transport networks. The main barrier is the nature and complexity of recovery actions, which encompass engineering, operational, owner resources and organisational challenges, among others. This paper, for the first time in the international literature, aims at filling this gap by generating a set of reliable recovery models that include both bridge reinstatement (traffic capacity) and restoration (structural capacity) models based on a detailed questionnaire that elicits knowledge from experts. Recovery models are then presented and validated for spread and deep foundations for a typical reinforced concrete bridge, including restoration task prioritisation and scheduling, inter-task dependencies, idle times, durations and cost ratios for different damage levels, as well as the evolution of traffic capacity after floods.
Additional publications
Georgiou I., Loli M., Kourkoulis R., Gazetas G. (2020). Pullout of Steel Grids in Dense Sand: Experiments and Design Insights, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, ASCE. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0002358
Loli M., Tsatsis A., Kourkoulis R., Anastasopoulos I. (2019). A simplified numerical method to simulate the thawing of frozen soil, Geotechnical Engineering, ICE, 173 (5): 408-427. DOI: 10.1680/jgeen.18.00239
Tsatsis A., Loli M., Gazetas G. (2019). Pipeline in Dense Sand Subjected to Tectonic Deformation from Normal or Reverse Faulting, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, 127. DOI: 10.1016/j.soildyn.2019.105780
Loli M., Kourkoulis R., Gazetas G. (2018). Physical and Numerical Modelling of Hybrid Foundations to Mitigate Seismic Fault Rupture Effects, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 14(11): 43-66. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0001966
Loli M., Anastasopoulos I., and Gazetas G. (2015). Nonlinear analysis of earthquake fault rupture interaction with historic masonry buildings, Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, 13(1): 83-95. DOI: 10.1007/s10518-014-9607-z
Loli M., Knappett J.A., Anastasopoulos I., and Brown M.J. (2015). Use of Ricker motions as an alternative to pushover testing, International Journal of Physical Modelling in Geotechnics, ICE, 15(1): 44-55.
Douglas J., Seyedi D. M., Ulrich T., Modaressi H., Foerster E., Pitilakis K., Pitilakis D., Karatzetzou A., Loli M., Gazetas G., (2015). Evaluation of seismic hazard for the assessment of historical elements at risk: description of input and selection of intensity measures, Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, 13(1): 49-65.
Loli M., Knappett J.A., Brown M.J., Anastasopoulos I., and Gazetas G. (2014). Centrifuge Modeling of Rocking–isolated Inelastic RC Bridge Piers, Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, 43 (15): 2341-2359.
Anastasopoulos I., Loli M., Georgarakos T., and Drosos V. (2013). Shaking Table Testing of Rocking−isolated Bridge Pier on Sand, Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 17(1): 1-32.
Drosos V., Georgarakos T., Loli M., Anastasopoulos I., Zarzouras O., and Gazetas G. (2012). Soil–Foundation–Structure Interaction with Mobilization of Bearing Capacity: An Experimental Study on Sand, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, ASCE, 138(11): 1369-1386.
Loli M., Bransby M.F., Anastasopoulos I., Gazetas G. (2012). Interaction of Caisson Foundations with a Seismically Rupturing Normal Fault: Centrifuge Testing versus Numerical Simulation, Géotechnique, Vol. 62(1), pp. 29-43.
Loli M., Anastasopoulos I., Bransby M.F., Waqas A., Gazetas G. (2011). Caisson Foundations subjected to Reverse Fault Rupture: Centrifuge Testing and Numerical Analysis, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, ASCE, 137(10): 914–926.
Anastasopoulos I., Gazetas G., Loli M., Apostolou M, Gerolymos N. (2010). Soil Failure can be used for Earthquake Protection of Structures, Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, 8(2): 309–326.