Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Earth Sciences, Tohoku University, 2024
  • M.Sc., Earth Sciences, Tohoku University, 2020
  • B.Sc., Geology, National University of Columbia, 2015
Additional Education & Training
  • ICS-700: National Incident Management System (NIMS), FEMA, Issued Feb 2025
  • ICS-200: Basic Incident Command System for Initial Response, FEMA, Issued Feb 2025
  • ICS-100: Introduction to the Incident Command System, FEMA, Issued Jan 2025
Professional Honors
  • Monbukagakusho (MEXT) Scholarship for postgraduate studies. Japanese Government Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Awarded through university recommendation.
Professional Affiliations
  • American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
  • Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute (COPRI/ASCE)
  • Japanese Geoscience Union (JpGU)

Erick R. Velasco-Reyes, Ph.D., is a coastal and multi-hazard risk scientist at Exponent with over 10 years assessing coastal flooding, hurricane storm surge, tsunami, and erosion hazards to buildings, ports, infrastructure, and the natural environment. He specializes in hydrodynamic and sediment-transport modeling, fragility-based vulnerability assessment, climate risk, and disaster risk management, supporting insurance, litigation, and regulatory matters involving coastal and natural-hazard damage.

Dr. Velasco-Reyes has led and contributed to projects spanning over a decade of research, consulting and disaster response practice involving natural hazard modeling, infrastructure damage assessment, coastal flood risk evaluation, and climate vulnerability analysis, providing expert analysis and consulting for research institutions, government agencies, NGOs, and port authorities. His work encompasses probabilistic hazard characterization, hydrodynamic simulation, fragility-based vulnerability assessment, and cascading risk analysis, with expertise in coastal flooding, storm surge, tsunami, and erosion impacts on buildings, ports, and lifeline systems.

He has served clients in infrastructure, energy and utilities, transportation (ports and maritime), NGOs and government and public-sector planning, addressing challenges including coastal property damage from storms and flooding, port and waterfront infrastructure failure, science-based support for regulatory and planning decisions in flood-prone areas, and climate adaptation planning. His consulting experience spans flood simulation and inundation mapping, storm and tsunami surge, wave impact analysis, shoreline erosion and sediment transport assessment, earthquake and tsunami hazard evaluation, and climate risk and multi-hazard cascading failure analysis.

Dr. Velasco-Reyes's consulting approach integrates physics-based numerical modeling (e.g., Delft3D, ADCIRC, GeoCLAW, SFINCS, HEC-RAS), probabilistic and Bayesian uncertainty quantification, fragility curve application, GIS-based geospatial analysis, and high-performance computing to deliver rigorous, defensible, and decision-ready conclusions. He translates complex multi-hazard analyses into clear risk metrics, actionable recommendations, and visual decision-support products accessible to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. His methods support forensic, physics-based damage-causation analysis — attributing coastal flood, storm-surge, and erosion damage to specific physical mechanisms — for expert investigation, insurance, and litigation contexts.

Before joining Exponent, Dr. Velasco-Reyes served as a Postdoctoral Scholar at Oregon State University, where he led multi-institution research on coastal infrastructure resilience, hurricane storm surge modeling, and tsunami-induced sediment transport. Previously, he directed disaster risk management programs at the Colombian Red Cross, advised the Colombian government on national tsunami risk reduction, and coordinated international emergency response operations including the 2016 Ecuador earthquake. He earned his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Earth Science from Tohoku University (Japan) and his B.Sc. in Geology from the National University of Colombia. He also served as a member within the Colombian Red Cross Search and Rescue (SAR) team, directing multiple field operations.

Dr. Velasco-Reyes has published peer-reviewed articles on tsunami hazard, coastal morphodynamics, climate risk modeling, and disaster response optimization in journals including Communications Earth & Environment, Coastal Engineering, and Progress in Earth and Planetary Science. He has secured competitive research funding from NSF-funded CoPes Hub, the Cascadia Lifelines Program, and the NSF-funded Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT). His work on catastrophe and climate-risk model design — including "Rethinking Uncertainty: Why Disaster and Climate Risk Models Must Move Beyond Logic Trees" (with a Marsh expert) and commentary for the Actuaries Institute of Australia — engages directly with the insurance and actuarial community.

Areas of Expertise

  • Coastal flood, storm surge, hurricane, tropical cyclone, tsunami & multi-hazard modeling
  • Hydrodynamic & morphodynamic simulation (Delft3D, SFINCS, GeoClaw, ADCIRC, SWAN, HEC-RAS)
  • Coastal geology, structural geology, sedimentology & geomorphology
  • Seismic risk
  • Fragility & vulnerability analysis
  • Catastrophe & probabilistic risk modeling
  • Bayesian inference, time-series analysis & uncertainty quantification
  • Climate risk assessment & adaptation planning
  • GIS / geospatial analysis (ArcGIS Pro, QGIS)
  • Python
  • High-performance computing
  • Stakeholder engagement & risk communication