Marcus N. Gomes Jr., Ph.D.

Marcus N. Gomes Jr., Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Selected Publications in Peer Reviewed Journals

For a full list of journal and conference publications, please download my CV.
You can also check it on my Google Scholar profile.

Journal Articles

Hydrological-Hydrodynamic Modeling of Climate Change-Induced Urban Floods Using Design Rainfall with HydroPol2D: A Case Study in São Carlos, Brazil

Published in RBRH, 2026

Sao Carlos is a very flood-prone city. Even though it is home to two of the largest universities in Brazil, producing significant research and scientific progress in several fields, São Carlos has a very poor drainage system, and the city was urbanized, conversely maximizing flood effects by having its downtown in a natural floodplain. In this paper, we build a hydrologic-hydrodynamic model to investigate the effects of climate change on rare storms such as the 100-yr storm. We show that flood depths can increase up to several meters in some areas due to climate change, showing a critical scenario for the future.

Recommended citation: Sousa, M.R.D., Mendiondo, E.M. and Gomes Júnior, M.N., 2026. Modelagem hidrológica-hidrodinâmica de inundações urbanas induzidas por mudanças climáticas com chuvas de projeto usando o HydroPol2D: estudo de caso em São Carlos, Brasil. RBRH, 31, p.e02.
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Flood Event Escalation and Urban Drainage Design Implications Under Nonstationary Rainfall in São Paulo State, Brazil

Published in Water, 2026

In this paper, we show the impact of climate change on the design of urban drainage infrastructure, such as culverts. Results indicate potential increases in culvert dimensions of nearly 20-30% to accommodate future flooding patterns driven by climate change. We conclude that significant investments in flood protection will be necessary in São Paulo to safely convey the future floods in the state.

Recommended citation: Brandão, A.R., Castro, M.A., Sánchez, M.H., Gomes Jr, M.N., Uchôa, J.G.S., Vaz, I.C., Ghisi, E., Anache, J.A., Wendland, E.C., Oliveira, P.T. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2026. Flood Event Escalation and Urban Drainage Design Implications Under Nonstationary Rainfall in São Paulo State, Brazil. Water, 18(5), p.561.
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Assessing the socioeconomic benefits of the Agreste Adduction System in Pernambuco, Brazil

Published in RBRH, 2026

The Agreste region of Pernambuco is one of the most water-insecure areas in Brazil. Despite its socioeconomic importance and dense population within the semi-arid Northeast, the region faces chronic water scarcity due to irregular rainfall, absence of perennial rivers, and structural deficiencies in water supply systems. In this context, the Agreste Adduction System was conceived as a large-scale infrastructure solution to enhance water security by integrating local networks with the São Francisco River transfer. In this paper, we apply a socioeconomic cost–benefit analysis to evaluate the impacts of the system under a baseline scenario of persistent water risk and an alternative scenario with full implementation. We show that the project generates substantial net social benefits by reducing water insecurity, avoiding the high costs of emergency supply, and enabling reliable access for millions of people, demonstrating strong economic viability and a critical role in promoting long-term regional resilience.

Recommended citation: Castro, M.D.A.R.A., Gomes, M.N. and Montenegro, S.M.G.L., 2026. Assessing the socioeconomic benefits of the Agreste Adduction System in Pernambuco, Brazil. RBRH, 31, p.e04.
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Spatio-Temporal Performance of 2D Local Inertial Hydrodynamic Models for Urban Drainage and Dam-Break Applications

Published in Journal of Hydrology, 2025

In this paper, we show for the first time that local inertial models can simulate dam-break (supercritical flows) and have a skillful prediction of flood inundation extents while having a nearly 30-fold faster computational performance compared to traditional full hydrodynamic models. We also show that omitting urban drainage features can make simulations unrealistic and nearly double computational time.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr MN, Castro MA, Castillo LM, Sánchez MH, Giacomoni MH, de Paiva RC, Bates PD. Spatio-temporal performance of 2d local inertial hydrodynamic models for urban drainage and dam-break applications. Journal of Hydrology. 2025 Nov 24:134661.
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Multiple levels of human instability due to urban overland flow within the 21st century: An urban Catchment study case in Brazil

Published in International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2025

In this paper, we use a 2D hydrodynamic model to compute future changes in human instability due to climate change in an urban catchment in Sao Paulo. We illustrate that the effect of climate change can increase human instability to sliding and topling by 10-20%, and we show that children and elderly people are the most affected.

Recommended citation: Rápalo LM, Gomes Jr MN, Mendiondo EM. Multiple levels of human instability due to urban overland flow within the 21st century: An urban Catchment study case in Brazil. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. 2025 Nov 27:105931.
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A coupled Darcy–Richards framework for hydrological modeling of permeable pavements, green roofs, and bioretention systems

Published in Environmental Modelling and Software, 2025

In this paper, we developed a novel 1D Richards model capable of performing long-term (+30-yr) continuous simulations of infiltration-based LID systems such as Permeable Pavements, Green Roofs, or Bioretention Systems. We apply the model under model intercomparisons with Hydrus-1D under a variety of initial states and boundary conditions as well as in a real-world monitored permeable pavement and in tests for 4 distinct cities in the U.S. The model presented sufficient robustness for all tested cases.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr MN, Brasil JA, Johnson D, Papagiannakis AT, Giacomoni MH. A coupled Darcy-Richards framework for hydrological modeling of permeable pavements, green roofs, and bioretention systems. Environmental Modelling & Software. 2025 Nov 7:106766.
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A simple method for designing infiltration low impact development techniques considering effects of urbanization and climate change

Published in Brazilian Journal of Water Resources, 2025

In this paper, we develop a simple spreadsheed-based model that can simulate retention ponds, that is, ponds in which the bottom exfiltration is not negligible. By using the Green-Ampt model, we show the performance of different retention ponds under USGS soil type classifications and compute the required area-ratio (LID area / Catchment Area) to satisfy design constraints. The spreadsheet is freely availalbe in my github account.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr MN, Lago CA, Mendiondo EM. A simple method for designing infiltration low impact development techniques considering effects of urbanization and climate change. RBRH. 2025 Nov 10;30:e41.
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Reformulating the Rational Method Considering Dissimilar Land Use Types

Published in Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, 2025

In this paper, we show that there exists a critical rainfall duration different from the time of concentration for small catchments with dissimilar land use. A common misconception is that assuming the rainfall duration as the time of concentration would result in a maximized urban hydrograph peak. We show that this is not the case and provide a simple solution for the problem that is easily programmable in Excel.

Recommended citation: Vasconcelos, J.G., Gomes Jr, M.N., Oliveira, P.T.S., Yang, D. and Fang, X., 2025. Reformulating the Rational Method Considering Dissimilar Land Use Types. Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, 151(4), p.04025017.
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Exploring the impact of rainfall temporal distribution and critical durations on flood hazard modeling

Published in Natural Hazards, 2025

We evaluate the impact of different methods of predicting rainfall temporal variability and its impacts on flood hazard assessment. Using a 2D hydrologic-hydrodynamic model (HydroPol2D), we specifically evaluate the impact of typical synthetic rainfall distributions compared to the pattern of rainfall distribution derived from high-resolution rainfall data.

Recommended citation: Gomes, M.N., Jalihal, V., Castro, M. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2025. Exploring the impact of rainfall temporal distribution and critical durations on flood hazard modeling. Natural Hazards, 121(9), pp.10989-11012.
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Spatio-Temporal Performance of 2D Local Inertial Hydrodynamic Models for Urban Drainage and Dam-Break Applications

Published in ArXiv, submitted to Journal of Hydrology (Under Review), 2024

We tested different local-inertial 2D hydrodynamic numerical schemes to represent flood dynamics in domains with the influence of urban drainage and cases of rapid flows with large Froude numbers as a dam-break scenario.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr, M.N., Castro, M.A., Castillo, L.M., Sánchez, M.H., Giacomoni, M.H., de Paiva, R.C. and Bates, P.D., 2024. Spatio-Temporal Performance of 2D Local Inertial Hydrodynamic Models for Urban Drainage and Dam-Break Applications. arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.09325.
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Real-time regulation of detention ponds via feedback control: Balancing flood mitigation and water quality

Published in Journal of Hydrology, 2024

This paper develops a Real-Time-Control algorithm based on a Model Predictive Controller to optimally estimate valve and gate operations in detention ponds focusing on water quantity and quality mitigation.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr, M.N., Taha, A.F., Rápalo, L.M.C., Mendiondo, E.M. and Giacomoni, M.H., 2024. Real-time regulation of detention ponds via feedback control: Balancing flood mitigation and water quality. Journal of Hydrology, 643, p.131866.
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Developing an open-source flood forecasting system adapted to data-scarce regions: A digital twin coupled with hydrologic-hydrodynamic simulations.

Published in Journal of Hydrology, 2024

We develop an open-souce digital twin coupling hydrologic-hydrodynamic simulation of catchments. We applied the methodology in the contiguous country of Honduras, South America, representing more than 100,000 sqkm of area.

Recommended citation: Rápalo, L.M., Gomes Jr, M.N. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2024. Developing an open-source flood forecasting system adapted to data-scarce regions: A digital twin coupled with hydrologic-hydrodynamic simulations. Journal of Hydrology, 644, p.131929.
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Generalizing rapid flood predictions to unseen urban catchments with conditional generative adversarial networks

Published in Journal of Hydrology, 2023

We show for the first time an application of conditional generative adversarial networks that were trained in a site and applied in a different site with good results in predicting flood inundation maps.

Recommended citation: do Lago, Cesar AF, Marcio H. Giacomoni, Roberto Bentivoglio, Riccardo Taormina, Marcus N. Gomes Junior, and Eduardo M. Mendiondo. "Generalizing rapid flood predictions to unseen urban catchments with conditional generative adversarial networks." Journal of Hydrology 618 (2023): 129276.
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Modeling and Design Optimization of Looped Water Distribution Networks using MS Excel: Developing the Open-Source X-WHAT Model

Published in on ArXiv and Submitter to Computer Applications in Engineering Education (Under Review) , 2024

We developed a simple Excel spreadsheet capable of simulating the flow water problem in looped hydraulic networks and optimize the network cost by accounting for pipe properties, reservoir costs, and structural foundation costs.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr, M.N., Benites, I.M., Elsherif, S.M., Taha, A.F. and Giacomoni, M.H., 2024. Modeling and Design Optimization of Looped Water Distribution Networks using MS Excel: Developing the Open-Source X-WHAT Model. arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.09044.
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Exploring the Impact of Rainfall Temporal Distribution and Critical Durations on Flood Hazard Modeling.

Published in Research Square, submitted to Natural Hazards (Under Review), 2024

We evaluate how different methods of rainfall temporal distribution affect the prediction of 100-yr flood maps compared to local rainfall temporal distribution derived from observed high-resolution rainfall data.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr, M.N., Jalihal, V. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2024. Exploring the Impact of Rainfall Temporal Distribution and Critical Durations on Flood Hazard Modeling.
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Improving pluvial flood mapping resolution of large coarse models with deep learning

Published in Hydrological Sciences, 2023

We explore the use of conditional and generative adversarial neural networks to map maximum flood depths using coarse gridded hydrologic-hydrodynamic models to provide training data.

Recommended citation: Ambrogi Ferreira Do Lago, C., Brasil, J.A.T., Nóbrega Gomes, M., Mendiondo, E.M. and Giacomoni, M.H., 2024. Improving pluvial flood mapping resolution of large coarse models with deep learning. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 69(5), pp.607-621.
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Modeling unsteady and steady 1-D hydrodynamics under different hydraulic conceptualizations: Model/software development and case studies

Published in Environmental Modeling and Software, 2023

We develop the HydroHP-1D Model: A one-dimensional full momentum solver based on de St. Venant Equations for rectangular, trapezoid, circular, parabolic, composite, and irregular cross-sections.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr, M.N., Rápalo, L.M., Oliveira, P.T., Giacomoni, M.H., do Lago, C.A. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2023. Modeling unsteady and steady 1D hydrodynamics under different hydraulic conceptualizations: Model/Software development and case studies. Environmental Modelling & Software, 167, p.105733.
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Brazilian water security threatened by climate change and human behavior.

Published in Water Resources Research, 2023

We estimate water scarcity considering climate change scenarios and future water use in the contiguous Brazil.

Recommended citation: Ballarin, André S., José Gescilam Sousa Mota Uchôa, Matheus S. dos Santos, André Almagro, Ianca P. Miranda, Pedro Gustavo C. da Silva, Greicelene J. da Silva, Marcus N. Gomes Júnior, Edson Wendland, and Paulo Tarso S. Oliveira. "Brazilian water security threatened by climate change and human behavior." Water Resources Research 59, no. 7 (2023): e2023WR034914.
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A Modeling Framework for Bioretention Analysis: Assessing the Hydrologic Performance under System Uncertainty

Published in Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, 2023

We develop TC-Hydro model - A hydrologic model to simulate, evaluate, perform local sensitivity analysis, global sensitivity analysis, optimize design, and estimate costs of rain gardens and bioretentions.

Recommended citation: Gomes Jr, Marcus Nóbrega, Marcio Hofheinz Giacomoni, Marina Batalini de Macedo, César Ambrogi Ferreira do Lago, José Artur Teixeira Brasil, Thalita Raquel Pereira de Oliveira, and Eduardo Mario Mendiondo. "A Modeling Framework for Bioretention Analysis: Assessing the Hydrologic Performance under System Uncertainty." Journal of Hydrologic Engineering 28, no. 9 (2023): 04023025.
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Modular design of bioretention systems for sustainable stormwater management under drivers of urbanization and climate change

Published in Sustainability, 2022

We develop a modular way of designing LID infrastructure by considering future scenarios of climate change and only implementing new LID areas to mitigate the non-stationarity of the current climate.

Recommended citation: Batalini de Macedo, M., Gomes Júnior, M.N., Jochelavicius, V., de Oliveira, T.R.P. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2022. Modular design of bioretention systems for sustainable stormwater management under drivers of urbanization and climate change. Sustainability, 14(11), p.6799.
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Low Impact Development practices in the context of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: A new concept, lessons learned and challenges.

Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2022

In this paper we review the current state of the art regarding LID implementation towards the attachment of the SDGs

Recommended citation: Batalini de Macedo, Marina, Marcus Nobrega Gomes Junior, Thalita Raquel Pereira de Oliveira, Marcio H. Giacomoni, Maryam Imani, Kefeng Zhang, Cesar Ambrogi Ferreira do Lago, and Eduardo Mario Mendiondo. "Low Impact Development practices in the context of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: A new concept, lessons learned and challenges." Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology 52, no. 14 (2022): 2538-2581.
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Flood Risk Mitigation and Valve Control in Stormwater Systems: State-Space Modeling, Control Algorithms, and Case Studies

Published in Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 2022

We develop a state-space model to simulate catchments, reservoirs, and channels hydrologic-hydrodynamic processes. We coupled the model with multiple predictive and reactive control algorithms such as: Model Predictive Control, Linear Quadratic Regulators, and Linear Quadratic Integrators.

Recommended citation: Gomes Júnior, M.N., Giacomoni, M.H., Taha, A.F. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2022. Flood risk mitigation and valve control in stormwater systems: State-space modeling, control algorithms, and case studies. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 148(12), p.04022067.
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Nature-based solutions and real-time control: Challenges and opportunities

Published in Water, 2022

We review current opportunities and challenges of retrofitting nature-based solutions with real-time control facilities.

Recommended citation: Brasil, J., Macedo, M., Lago, C., Oliveira, T., Júnior, M., Oliveira, T. and Mendiondo, E., 2021. Nature-based solutions and real-time control: Challenges and opportunities. Water, 13(5), p.651.
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Can we scale digital twins of nature-based solutions for stormwater and transboundary water security projects

Published in Journal of Hydroinformatics, 2022

Digital twins are numerical-physical representation of real-world systems with human in the loop actuations. In this paper we investigate how they can be applied for water security issues using NBS.

Recommended citation: Brasil, J.A.T., de Macedo, M.B., de Oliveira, T.R.P., Ghiglieno, F.G., de Souza, V.C.B., Marinho e Silva, G., Gomes Júnior, M.N., de Souza, F.A.A. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2022. Can we scale Digital Twins of Nature-based Solutions for stormwater and transboundary water security projects?. Journal of hydroinformatics, 24(4), pp.749-764.
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Different configurations of a bioretention system focused on stormwater harvesting in Brazil

Published in Journal of Environmental Engineering, 2021

Using a plot-scale bioretention system, we empirically evaluate the role of internal water storage and antecedent moisture condition in terms of water quality treatment

Recommended citation: de Oliveira, T.R.P., de Macedo, M.B., Oliveira, T.H., do Lago, C.A.F., Gomes Jr, M.N., Brasil, J.A.T. and Mendiondo, E.M., 2021. Different configurations of a bioretention system focused on stormwater harvesting in Brazil. Journal of Environmental Engineering, 147(12), p.04021058.
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Towards urban resilience through sustainable drainage systems: A multi-objective optimisation problem

Published in Journal of Environmental Management, 2020

We introduce a multi-objective optimization problem to place low-impact development techniques in a peri-urban catchment using hydrologic-hydrodynamic modeling with SWMM.

Recommended citation: McClymont, K., Cunha, D.G.F., Maidment, C., Ashagre, B., Vasconcelos, A.F., de Macedo, M.B., Dos Santos, M.F.N., Júnior, M.N.G., Mendiondo, E.M., Barbassa, A.P. and Rajendran, L., 2020. Towards urban resilience through Sustainable Drainage Systems: A multi-objective optimisation problem. Journal of Environmental Management, 275, p.111173.
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