Research Interests

My seeks to understand how extreme natural events can become disasters. I learn from past events to create simulation models that provide insights into what may happen in the next ‘big one’ - an earthquake, wildfire, flood. My long-term goal is to create simulation models that will allow us to understand how all aspects of a community are impacted by and bounce back (or not) from disasters. In the meantime, I have focused on three community aspects: infrastructure, housing, and businesses.

Recent Events

• September 2025 - Charlotte Hamilton joins Costa's research group as a M.Sc. student and Iraj Soltani joins as a Ph.D. student.

• Alireza Ahmadi graduated with an M.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering with the thesis 'Agent-based simulation to evaluate the impact of seismic retrofit promotion policies'

• July 2025 - Rodrigo Costa attends and co-chairs the Natural Hazards Center Researchers Meeting.

• June 2025 - Rodrigo Costa, Maryia Markhvida, and Yuliya Parshina-Kottas received a RAPID grant from the Natural Hazards Center to collect perishable post-wildfire data in California.

• Ben Mann joined the research group as a co-op student working on a comparative analysis of disaster recovery expenditures in since 2017 in California, Texas, and Florida.

• March 2025 - Rodrigo Costa and colleagues received a grant from the New Frontiers of Research Fund - Exploration stream to study the use of secondary data sources in recovery assessment in past disasters.

• February 2025 - Rodrigo Costa attended the 2025 NHERI SimCenter Symposium at the University of California at Los Angeles.

• February 2025 - Rodrigo Costa gave a talk for the University of Toronto Center for Climate Science and Engineering.  

• January 2025 - Rodrigo Costa published Identifying viable financing mechanisms for post- earthquake housing reconstruction in Canada: Case study of a M7 earthquake in British Columbia in Earthquake Spectra.

• October 2024 - Rodrigo Costa chaired, and Alireza Ahmadi and Charlotte Hamilton attended the Ontario Climate Risk Workshop at the University of Toronto.

• October 2024 - Rodrigo Costa participated in the workshop to kick off his project 'Retreat from Risk:  Decision-supports for the equitable implementation of retreat to build climate resilience at the University of Waterloo with participants from Canada, the US, and Indonesia.

• October 2024 - Peter (Jeonghyun) Lee, Rodrigo Costa, and Jack Baker published Post-disaster Housing Recovery Estimation: Data and Lessons Learned from the 2017 Tubbs and 2018 Camp Fires in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

• September 2024 - Tinger Zhu, Omar Issa, Marya Markhvida, Rodrigo Costa, and Jack Baker published Multi-regional economic recovery simulation using an Adaptive Regional Input–Output (ARIO) framework in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

• August 2024 - Rodrigo Costa, Edward Bolte, Colleen Sharp, and Corinne Bowers published Repeated and localized flooding is an underestimated challenge for urban disaster risk management in Nature Cities.

• July 2024 - Rodrigo Costa chaired the Natural Hazards Workshop Researchers Meeting.

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• June 2024 - Rodrigo Costa is a co-PI on an NFRF-I Climate Change project focused on managed retreat as a potential flood risk mitigation strategy.

• April 2024 - Rodrigo Costa participated in the 2024 annual meeting of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.

• April 2024 - Rodrigo Costa joined Earthquake Spectra as an Associated Editor.

• March 2024 - Rodrigo Costa presented on Regional Risk Assessments as a tool to Inform Disaster Planning at Texas A&M.

• February 2024 - Rodrigo Costa published a new pre-print, Identifying Viable Financing Mechanisms for Post-Earthquake Housing Reconstruction in Canada.

• January 2024 - Emily Mongold, Rodrigo Costa, Adam Zsarnoczay, and Jack Baker published Modeling Post-disaster Recovery: Accounting for Rental and Multi-family Housing in Earthquake Spectra.

• November 2023 - The Natural Hazards Center Researchers Meeting is accepting abstract submissions. Rodrigo Costa and Alyssa Provencio will be the 2024 Chairs.

• October 2023 - Rodrigo Costa, Ali Lesani, and Alireza Ahmadi attended the Multi-Hazard Risk and Resilience Worksop at Western University.

• October 2023 - Rodrigo Costa and colleagues received a grant from HUD to study equitable and climate resilience housing.

• September 2023: Ali Lesani joined my group as a Ph.D. student, and Alireza Ahmadi as an M.Sc. student.

• September 2023—Rodrigo Costa, Edward Bolte, Colleen Sharp, and Corinne Bowers published After the Flood: How Presidential Disaster Declarations Affect Long-Term Well-Being and Recovery for Homeowners as a preprint.

• August 2023 - Rodrigo Costa and Jack Baker published 'A methodology to estimate post-disaster unmet housing needs using limited data' in Risk Analysis.

• July 2023 - Rodrigo Costa hosted the Natural Hazard's Center Researchers Meeting with Sara Hamideh, Sabine Loos, and Alyssa Provencio.

• February 2023 - Rodrigo Costa gave the February 2023 Tukstra Talk at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

• February 2023 - Rodrigo Costa joined the Waterloo Climate Institute.

• February 2023 - Rodrigo Costa gave a talk at the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.

• January 2023 - Rodrigo Costa gave a keynote lecture at the V-CIVIL 2023 Conference.

• December 2022 - Irene Alisjahbana, Ana Moura-Cook, Rodrigo Costa, and Anne Kiremidjian received an honourable mention at the 2022 Graduate Student Paper Award from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.

• November 2022 - Rodrigo Costa presented at the 2022 SimCenter Symposium at the Texas Advanced Computer Center in Austin.

• August 2022 - Rodrigo Costa joined the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

• July 2022 - Rodrigo Costa received the 2021 Graduate Student Paper Award from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute..

CV

CECREH

Retreat From Risk