David F. Muñoz
Assistant Professor
Biography
David F. Muñoz is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. His research combines coastal hydrology, hydrodynamic modeling, machine learning (AI), and remote sensing to better understand and predict compound flooding and climate-driven coastal hazards. He leads the CoRAL Lab, where he develops hybrid modeling and digital twin approaches to support flood monitoring, prediction, risk assessment, and climate resilience.
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 for coastal systems.
I work with hybrid modeling methods and frameworks to conduct local to large-scale assessments. Such methods integrate:
1) Physics-based 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.
- 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.
- 2026 ExCEEd Teaching Fellow by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
- 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.
- Daramola S., Muñoz D.F., Shen C (2026). Toward transferable models for efficient spatiotemporal flood prediction across coastal-estuarine systems. Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures, 4:e13. https://doi.org/10.1017/cft.2026.10037
- Sakib M.S., Muñoz D.F., Wahl T (2025) Breaking Down Annual and Tropical Cyclone-induced Nonlinear Interactions in Total Water Levels. Advances in Water Resources, :105108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2025.105108
- Daramola S, Muñoz DF, Moftakhari H, Moradkhani H (2025) A cluster-based temporal attention approach for predicting cyclone-induced compound flood dynamics. Environmental Modelling & Software, 191:106499. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2025.106499
- Daramola S, Muñoz DF, Muñoz P, Saksena S, Irish J (2025) Predicting the Evolution of Extreme Water Levels With Long Short-Term Memory Station-Based Approximated Models and Transfer Learning Techniques. Water Resources Research, 61(3):e2024WR039054. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR039054
- 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
- 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