Simona Dossi

About Simona Dossi, ESR7

Simona comes from Italy and holds a MEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh. Her PhD research was conducted in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London, in the Hazelab research group supervised by Prof. Guillermo Rein. Simona completed a remote secondment with NFPA in 2021, and an in-person secondment at ITB Poland in 2022, before submitting her final thesis in June 2023. The research project objective regarded how to increase the wildfire resilience of buildings in the European wildland-urban interface.

 To investigate this Simona conducted advanced statistical analysis of post-fire damage databases, developing a preliminary building vulnerability index to wildfire damage, and simulated different firebrand exposure scenarios with the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). The computational investigation of wildfire firebrand contact exposure with building obstacles focused on increasing understanding on firebrand movement and accumulation near solid surfaces.

Click here to get to know Simona.

Affiliation

Imperial College London

Research focus

The research includes a statistical analysis of two large building damage databases from different countries. The statistical analysis results were applied to develop a preliminary building vulnerability assessment, the Wildfire Resistance Index (WRI), and to further understanding of wildfire ignition and damage dynamics in diverse settings. To investigate the leading cause of wildfire building damage, wildfire firebrands, FDS Lagrangian Particle simulations of different wildfire firebrand exposure scenarios were conducted and analysed. The research connected wildfire firebrand hazard to sand hazard on infrastructures by learning from sand hazard protection measures and research methodologies.

More about Simona´s research here.

Post-PyroLife position

Postdoctoral Researcher, CERTEC, UPC

Skills and abilities

Statistical Analysis | Computational Data Analysis: CFD, FDS, Matlab, R | Heat Transfer and Transport Phenomena | Cultural Intelligence (completed training and through experience working in international diverse settings)

Languages

Italian (native), English (fluent), Spanish (intermediate)

Education

• PhD, Imperial College London. Thesis title: Analysis of building vulnerability and firebrand exposure to mitigate wildfire damage.
• MEng in Chemical Engineering from, the University of Edinburgh

Contact

simona.dossi@upc.edu

Social media

Twitter: @DossiSimona

Research publications

Dossi et al. (2022). Relationships between building features and wildfire damage in California, USA and Pedrógão Grande, Portugal. International Journal of Wildland Fire.

Other communication outputs

• Collaboration with Anna Mayer art for Arts Cabinet: What do embers feel like?
• Blog post and video introducing Wildfire Firebrands: The Fastest and Most Complex Wildfire Spread Pathway: Firebrand Spotting