About me (after several attempts, still a draft)
I am passionate about using research and engineering to help folks. I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering, Master of Science degree in Production Engineering, and Doctor of Philosophy degree in Urban and Regional Science. However, I don’t consider myself an expert in any one particular area — I’m more of a generalist.
I research to improve practices on risk assessment related to natural hazards with social impacts. The research areas I focus on are at the nexus of the sub-fields of urban geography and human ecology, and include using geographic information science for spatial analyses of risk, urban hazards, social impacts, and community-based participatory research.
As part of the hurricane evacuation studies, one of my works focuses on examining hurricane risk on coastal communities using causal probabilistic analysis through influence diagrams, which includes mapping risk for possible better risk communication and to the development of behavioral surveys. Also, I love teaching and preparing presentations. I am privileged to teach Urban Analytical Methods and Planning Methods.
At work, I’m a coding and reproducible research enthusiast, intensely employing open-source software. I am an avid R user, who loves geography, statistics, and fancy data visualizations. When I'm not at the computer, I enjoy building with Legos, running and biking, and traveling with my family.
Educational Background
Ph.D. Urban and Regional Science, Texas A&M University (LAUP/TAMU), College Station, Texas.
M.S. Production Engineering, Federal University of Sao Carlos (DEP/UFSCar), Brazil.
B.S. Civil Engineering, University of Sao Paulo (EESC/USP), Brazil.
Affiliation
College of Architecture (CoA) at Texas A&M University (TAMU)
Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning (LAUP)
Center for Geospatial Sciences, Applications and Technology (GEOSAT)
Research Interests
Research question: what's the risk?
Probabilistic causal analysis through influence diagrams (i.e. Bayesian networks)
Spatial analyses of risk, including thematic cartography and geo-visualization
Risk assessment for natural hazards with social impacts (e.g. hurricane evacuation planning)
Impact of natural disasters on suicide risk
Human geography and the production of space
Expertise in Geo-spatial Technologies
R (largely simple features, tidyverse and tidycensus, but also RGDAL and RGEOS)
QGIS (including processing R scripts, GRASS, and OSM geographic data)
Computer generated footprints (buildings polygonization)
Thematic cartography
Expertise in Analytical Methods
Bayesian Networks (BN)
Difference in Difference (DID)
Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
Hypothesis Testing for Means & Proportions
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