Rui Figueiredo is a catastrophe risk modeler at RED with over 15 years of professional experience in the industry and in academia. His current work and main scientific interests include natural hazard damage and loss modelling, risk assessment, and risk management, with a focus on hydro-meteorological phenomena.

Rui graduated in Civil Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), Portugal, in 2006. Between then and 2013 he worked as a multidisciplinary engineering designer and project manager in Portugal, having participated in over one hundred national and international engineering projects. In 2015, he obtained his Master's degree in Risk and Emergency Management from the University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, Italy, and in 2018 he obtained his Doctoral degree from the same institution within the Understanding and Managing Extremes PhD program. He was a postdoctoral researcher at IUSS Pavia and at FEUP between 2018 and 2022, and has participated in several research projects, including as Principal Investigator of a 2-year project supported by the highly competitive Disaster Risk Financing Challenge Fund. He has been visiting researcher at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and at the University of Exeter (UK). Rui has previously worked as a consultant in the development of risk models for various international stakeholders involved in disaster risk management activities.

Selected publications:

• Cesarini, L., Figueiredo, R., Monteleone, B., and Martina, M. L. V. (2021). The potential of machine learning for weather index insurance. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 21(8), 2379–2405. doi:10.5194/nhess-21-2379-2021
• Figueiredo, R., Romão, X., and Paupério, E. (2021). Component-based flood vulnerability modelling for cultural heritage buildings. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 61, 102323. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102323
• Costa, C., Figueiredo, R., Silva, V., and Bazzurro, P. (2020). Application of open tools and datasets to probabilistic modeling of road traffic disruptions due to earthquake damage. Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics, 49(12), 1236–1255. doi:10.1002/eqe.3288
• Figueiredo, R., Romão, X., and Paupério, E. (2020). Flood risk assessment of cultural heritage at large spatial scales: Framework and application to mainland Portugal. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 43, 163–174. doi:10.1016/j.culher.2019.11.007
• Lüdtke, S., Schröter, K., Steinhausen, M., Weise, L., Figueiredo, R., and Kreibich, H. (2019). A Consistent Approach for Probabilistic Residential Flood Loss Modeling in Europe. Water Resources Research, 55(12), 10616–10635. doi:10.1029/2019WR026213
• Dottori, F., Martina, M. L. V., and Figueiredo, R. (2018). A methodology for flood susceptibility and vulnerability analysis in complex flood scenarios. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 11(S2), S632–S645. doi:10.1111/jfr3.12234
• Figueiredo, R., Schröter, K., Weiss-Motz, A., Martina, M. L. V., and Kreibich, H. (2018). Multi-model ensembles for assessment of flood losses and associated uncertainty. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 18, 1297–1314. doi:10.5194/nhess-18-1297-2018
• Figueiredo, R., Martina, M. L. V., Stephenson, D. B., and Youngman, B. D. (2018). A Probabilistic Paradigm for the Parametric Insurance of Natural Hazards. Risk Analysis, 38(11), 2400–2414. doi:10.1111/risa.13122
• Dottori, F., Figueiredo, R., Martina, M., Molinari, D., and Scorzini, A. R. (2016). INSYDE: a synthetic, probabilistic flood damage model based on explicit cost analysis. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 16(12), 2577–2591. doi:10.5194/nhess-16-2577-2016
• Figueiredo, R., and Martina, M. (2016). Using open building data in the development of exposure data sets for catastrophe risk modelling. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 16(2), 417–429. doi:10.5194/nhess-16-417-2016