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Dr. Paolo Bergamo

Established Researcher

Swiss Seismological Service (SED)

ETH Zürich

Dr. Paolo Bergamo

NO FO 69.4

Sonneggstrasse 5

8092 Zürich

+41 44 632 89 63

I have joined SED in April 2016 and I am presently working as senior researcher in the Engineering Seismology group. I am an environmental engineer by training and in 2012 I obtained my PhD at Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in Earth Sciences. I worked as postdoc researcher at Politecnico di Torino, focusing on the reconstruction of near-surface velocity models from surface-wave data, and at Queen’s University Belfast, where I worked on time-lapse monitoring of infrastructures with geophysical surveys and studying foundation solutions for marine turbines. At SED my main lines of research include the collation between empirical ground-motions and seismic building codes, the spatial modelling of soil ground-motion amplification at small (microzonation) and large (national) spatial scales, onshore and offshore, and the characterization of instrumented sites with geophysical measurements.

Publications

Research Gate

Curriculum vitae

Research activity

April 2016 – present

Researcher at the Swiss Seismological Service (SED), ETH Zürich.

Research activity in the section “Engineering Seismology”, led by prof. D. Fäh. Fields of work:

Development of earthquake site response models. Projects: Earthquake Risk Model Switzerland – module E, site response implementation (commissioned by Fed. Council); SERA (Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe) project (Horizon2020) - task 7.4 “towards improvement of site characterization indicators”; Elastic response spectra for alpine valleys, commissioned by the Federal Office for Environment.
Investigation and improvement of ground-motion models. Project: SED-Erdbebenforschung zu Schweizer Kernanlagen (commissioned by ENSI).
Studies of collation between observed earthquake data and normative building codes. Projects: Development of site-specific elastic design spectra for future building codes, Database for design-compatible waveforms (commissioned by Federal Office for Environment).
Acquisition and analysis of seismic data for the site characterization of instrumented sites. Project: SSMNet Renewal – phase 2 (funded by Federal Office for Environment).

March 2014 – February 2016

Research fellow at Queen’s University Belfast (UK).

Fields of work:

Monitoring the stability of earthworks at risk of failure, combining time-lapse geophysical and geophysical data. Projects: Geophysical Condition Assessment of Railway Earthworks (GeoCARE), Infrastructure Slopes Sustainable Management and Resilience Assessment (iSMART), EPSRC funded
Geotechnical studies to validate a novel solution for the foundations of off-shore tidal turbines. Project: Tension piles for marine renewables, funded by InvestNI.

January 2012 – February 2014

Research fellow at Politecnico di Torino (Italy).

Fields of work:

Development and implementation of surface wave analysis techniques for the characterization of the near-surface. Projects: 3D Surface Wave inversion for near surface velocity models (commissioned by Saudi Aramco), Understanding the Earth Crust and Upper Mantle Seismic Properties through Joint Surface- and Body-Wave Tomography (MITOR: MIT Boston – Politecnico di Torino collaboration project).

Education

January 2009 – December 2011

Philosophy Doctorate (Ph.D.) at Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in Water and
Territory Management Engineering.

Advisors: Prof. Laura Valentina Socco and Prof. Sebastiano Foti
Thesis: “Surface wave analysis in laterally varying media”

January 2006 – May 2008

Master of Science in Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Torino (Italy).

Thesis: “Innovative processing techniques for 3D seismic data”. Supervisors: Prof. Laura Valentina Socco and Dr. Daniele Boiero.

September 2002 – December 2005

Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Torino (Italy).

Thesis: “Laterally and mutually constrained inversion of seismic and electrical data: Torre Pellice case study”. Supervisors: Prof. Laura Valentina Socco and Dr. Daniele Boiero.