I study floods from streets to river basins, examining flood processes and impacts at local, regional, continental, and global scales.
Postdoctoral Researcher · Stanford Earth System Science
01 · About
Marcus N. Gomes Jr., PhD Hydrologist
I am interested in floods and extreme events, especially how their physical drivers and impacts change across scales. My work began with urban floods and open-source numerical models in Brazil. It now connects high-resolution hydrologic and hydrodynamic simulation, Earth observation, field measurements, data assimilation, and machine learning across Brazil, India, California, and the continental United States.
02 · Academic path
2013–2017
B.Sc., Civil Engineering
Teaching and undergraduate research on urban flood mitigation.
2018–2023
M.Sc. and Ph.D., Hydrology & Water Resources
Open-source flood modeling, design rainfall, and nature-based drainage. Best 2023 engineering thesis at EESC-USP.
2020–Present
Ph.D. studies, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Urban drainage, permeable pavement, field monitoring, and real-time control.
2024–2026
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Hillslope hydrology and data assimilation at the Landscape Evolution Observatory.
2026–Present
Postdoctoral Researcher
Flood reconstruction across scales and the human consequences of exposure.
03 · Research program
Flood impacts are local, but national and global models cannot represent every street, channel, and drainage system. Coarser models smooth the terrain, hydraulic connectivity, storage, and infrastructure that control where water accumulates. Running meter-scale physically-based models across countries remains computationally prohibitive, and we still do not know which local characteristics coarse models must preserve. I work on this gap so large-scale regional or global models can support local decisions.
Question 01 / Reconstruction
Build multi-decade flood reconstructions by assimilating satellites, gauges, cameras, low-cost sensors, and community observations into physical models.
Question 02 / Scaling physics
Simplify rainfall, terrain, storage, infrastructure, and surface–subsurface exchange systematically, then measure what changes inside the flooded domain, not only at the outlet.
Question 03 / Adaptation
Compare distributed nature-based solutions with conventional infrastructure under changing rainfall, land use, and aging systems, including cost and transferred risk.
04 · Selected publications
Peer-reviewed first-author publications spanning hillslope-scale processes, catchment-scale processes, and multi-hazard continental vulnerability and exposure.
Water Resources ResearchSimplified hillslope models can achieve greater accuracy by incorporating observations of groundwater depth and seepage (KGE from 0.85 to 0.96).
Water Resources Research
Journal of HydrologyA formulation preserved maximum flood extent twenty times faster, while arrival time and velocity still changed. These variables determine local warning and hazard.
Journal of Hydrology
Sustainable Cities and SocietyAn XGBoost framework compares floods, droughts, wildfires, and socioeconomic exposure consistently across the continent.
Sustainable Cities and Society
05 · Models and data products
Scientific tools and models developed in a variety of fields related to water resources and Earth system science.
Core open-source model
A hydrologic–hydrodynamic model for surface–subsurface flow and pollutant transport and fate.
A distributed water-cycle model coupling rainfall, infiltration, groundwater dynamics, runoff, urban drainage, channels, reservoirs, pollutant transport, snow, land-surface energy balance, and surface flooding.
06 · Current work
07 · Contact
Feel free to connect and shoot me an email.