Reinaldo Garcia

Dr. Garcia is a Senior Engineer and researcher with over 37 years of professional experience in modeling flow, sediment and pollutant transport. He has participated in hundreds of watershed, river, coastal, groundwater, and pollutant dispersion modeling studies worldwide. He has developed and applied models to simulate 2D and 3D free surface flows, riverine and floodplain flooding, dam-breaks, pollutants transport, including oil spills, sediment dynamics, and hydrologic models. He has extensive experience applying models to support practical engineering designs and sound environmental restoration projects. He is the creator of RiverFlow2D and OilFlow2D flexible-mesh flooding, pollutant transport and oil spill spreading models that are used in more than 80 countries. He has published numerous articles in journals, books and conference proceedings on flow and transport, flooding, hazard assessments, pollutant transport and dispersion, sediment transport modeling, free surface flow models, and oil spills. Dr. Garcia was a professor of the Fluid Mechanics Institute of the University of Central Venezuela for more than 25 years, teaching courses at graduate levels in pollutant dynamics, hydrology, and numerical modeling. From 2004 to 2006 he was Visiting Professor at the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering of the University of Miami. He is a Research Fellow of the Wessex Institute of Technology in the UK. He is now Senior Research Scientist at the Applied Research Center, Florida International University in Miami, FL USA.

Research Areas

• Coastal and riverine flooding
• Floodplain management
• Hydrologic modeling
• Sediment transport
• Water quality modeling