David F. Muñoz
Assistant Professor
David F. Muñoz
Patton Hall
Blacksburg, VA, USA 24061
Mail Code: (0105)
Program Area : Environmental and Water Resources Engineering
Personal Homepage : https://davidmunozpauta.wixsite.com/dfmp
Areas of Interest
I am interested in coastal hydrological processes including compound flood dynamics, wetland change, sea level rise, land subsidence, tropical cyclone (hurricane) events, and digital twin systems in the context of climate change and anthropogenic impacts.
I work with hybrid modeling methods and frameworks to conduct local to large-scale assessments. Such methods integrate:
1) Physics-informed models including coastal, hydrodynamic, hydraulic, and hydrologic models.
2) Statistical methods for uncertainty quantification, data assimilation, and sensitivity analysis.
3) Machine learning for pattern recognition, data fusion, and prediction tasks including shallow and deep learning architectures.
4) Big data management including remote sensing (satellite) and drone observations.
Check the CoRAL Lab webpage for more information (https://davidmunozpauta.wixsite.com/coral)
- B. Eng. Civil Engineering. University of Cuenca – Ecuador, 2013.
- M.Sc. Earth and Environment, Hydrology and Water Resources. Wageningen University & Research – The Netherlands, 2017.
- Ph.D. Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Coastal Hydrology. The University of Alabama – USA, 2021.
- Assistant Professor. Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Patton Hall Blacksburg, VA 24061. August 2022 to present.
- Postdoctoral research associate. Center for Complex Hydrosystems Research (CCHR). The University of Alabama. 248 Kirkbride Ln, Tuscaloosa, AL 35401. September 2021 to August 2022.
- Urban flood modeler. “Cost Effective Neural Technique to Alleviate Urban Flood Risk” – CENTAUR project. (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/centaur). Department of Civil Engineering. Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) – Pólo II. Rua Luis Reis Dos Santos, 3030-790. Coimbra, Portugal. October 2017 to August 2018
- Internship. Urban flood modeling and sewer overflow control. “CENTAUR project” under the H2020 framework. Department of Civil Engineering. University of Coimbra. Coimbra, Portugal. March 2017 to July 2017.
- Civil engineer. KIMSA Constructors/Azuay Prefecture. Cuenca, Ecuador. Amazonas Constructors/Enterprise of Economic Development (EDEC). Cuenca, Ecuador. Civil engineer (junior). Consultancy in Environmental and Sanitary Engineering (CONSULTORACAV)/Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MIDUVI). Ministry of Transportation and Public Works (MTOP). Cuenca, Ecuador. February 2013 to May 2015.
- 2022 NHERI RAPID Facility Intensive Hands-On Training Workshop. Travel grant. Seattle WA. July 2022.
- 2022 Outstanding Dissertation Award. Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, The University of Alabama. Tuscaloosa, AL. April 2022.
- National Water Center Innovators Program – Summer Institute. Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Tuscaloosa, AL. June 2019.
- ERASMUS+ program. Student grant for traineeship. European Commission. Wageningen, NL. February 2017.
- SENESCYT scholarship. Ecuadorian government. Cuenca, EC. September 2014.
- CEE 3814: Analytical Tools in Civil and Environmental Engineering
- CEE 5364: Compound Flood Hazard Modeling
- Collaborative Research: CAS-Climate: Nonstationarity of Compound Coastal Floods in the Anthropocene. National Science Foundation. Division of Earth Sciences. Hydrologic Sciences Program. Start date: October 2022.
- Muñoz, D. F., Moftakhari, H., Moradkhani, H., 2024. Quantifying cascading uncertainty in compound flood modeling with linked process-based and machine learning models. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2024-9
- Moftakhari, H., Muñoz, D. F., Jay, D. A., Akbari, A., AghaKouchak, A., Moradkhani, H. (2024). The nonlinear interaction of sea-level rise and surge-tide alters coastal flooding dynamics. AGU Advances. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023AV000996
- Mahmoudi, S., Moftakhari, H., Muñoz, D.F., Sweet, W., Moradkhani, H., 2024. Establishing flood thresholds for sea level rise impact communication. Nature Communications 15, 4251. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48545-1
- Muñoz, D.F., Abbaszadeh, P., Moftakhari, H., Moradkhani, H., 2022. Accounting for uncertainties in compound flood hazard assessment: The value of data assimilation. Coastal Engineering 171, 104057. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coastaleng.2021.104057
- Muñoz, D.F., Muñoz, P., Moftakhari, H., Moradkhani, H., 2021. From local to regional compound flood mapping with deep learning and data fusion techniques. Science of The Total Environment 782, 146927. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146927
- Muñoz, D.F., Muñoz, P., Alipour, A., Moftakhari, H., Moradkhani, H., Mortazavi, B., 2021. Fusing Multisource Data to Estimate the Effects of Urbanization, Sea Level Rise, and Hurricane Impacts on Long-Term Wetland Change Dynamics. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing 14, 1768–1782. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2020.3048724
- Muñoz, D.F., Moftakhari, H., Moradkhani, H., 2020. Compound Effects of Flood Drivers and Wetland Elevation Correction on Coastal Flood Hazard Assessment. Water Resources Research 56, e2020WR027544. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR027544