About Us

FLO-2D Software, Inc. is a privately owned corporation with headquarters in eastern Arizona.   FLO-2D Software, Inc. offers a number of advanced modeling tools for flooding, hydrology, river hydraulics, sediment and pollutant transport, estuary dynamics and coastal flooding.  Our software is used worldwide and we offer international training and short courses as well as consulting and technical support.  FLO-2D Software is affiliated with Riada Engineering to provide flood modeling and consulting.

There are a number of modeling developers and associates. The primary software designers responsible for the FLO-2D modeling system and our companion software are briefly described below.

Jimmy S. O’Brien – President/Creator of FLO-2D 
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The origins of the FLO-2D model grew out of a model developed by Jim O’Brien for FEMA called MUDFLOW in 1989 while at FLO Engineering, Inc. Jim O’Brien is president and a senior hydraulic engineer with FLO-2D Software, Inc. Dr. O’Brien has Masters degrees in aerospace and civil engineering from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. civil engineering (hydraulics program) from Colorado State University. He received an undergraduate aerospace engineering degree from St. Louis University. He is the author of numerous articles on hydrology, river hydraulics, flood routing and hyperconcentrated sediment flows and is a licensed professional engineer in four states. He has over 20 years experience in hydraulics and sediment transport as a consulting engineer.

Reinaldo García – GDS and Mapper Developer, Creator of RiverFLO-2D
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Reinaldo is the creator of the RiverFLO-2D model and co-designer of the Grid Developer System (GDS) and the Mapper processor program for the FLO-2D model.  He has also developed other 2D and 3D water quality and estuary models that are planned to be released through FLO-2D Software as well.  Reinaldo has 30 years of research and professional experience developing and applying models to simulate 2D and 3D free surface flows, multiphase flows, pollutants discharges including oil spills and sediment transport dynamics  in more than 20 countries throughout Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America. He has published numerous articles in journals, books and conference proceedings on sediment transport modeling, free surface flow models, finite element computation, and oil spills. He has a Master degree from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada and a Ph.D from the University of Central Venezuela. He is also research scientist at Florida International University in Miami where he is working on a NASA funded project developing novel hydrological models for wetlands using remote sensing data.

Juan Jose Rodruiguez – GDS and Mapper Developer, Mapper.Net
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Juan Jose is co-designer and senior programmer of the Grid Developer System (GDS)  program and Mapper post-processor program for the FLO-2D model. He has been programming for more than 30 years with different programming languages and platforms. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Systems from Essex University, UK, a Masters degree from the University of London in Computing Science, and a PhD from the University of Wales. He currently has 29 years as a lecturer and researcher at the Central University of Venezuela.

Fernando Nardi – Software Engineer
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Fernando Nardi has an undergraduate degree in civil engineering and received a Ph.D. in Flood Hydrology and Hydraulics from the University of Rome La Sapienza.  His specific area of research was in the application of remotely sensed digital terrain models for flood risk assessment and mapping using advanced GIS-based tools for rainfall-runoff modeling and surface flow dynamics. He is an expert in object-oriented programming and in free surface flow numerical modeling. Dr. Nardi was a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge MA, USA) collaborating with the Rafael Bras Hydrology Research Group. He has participated on several international research and consulting projects on flooding, mud and debris flows, and water-driven risk mapping projects.

Dr. Nardi is the co-founder of the HAREC consulting firm (Rome, Italy founded in 2007), and works worldwide on fluvial hydraulics, coastal and maritime design projects. Fernando collaborates with FLO-2D Software on both programming and consulting and he provides FLO-2D training and technical assistance to the European engineering community.

Craig Jorgensen – Software Engineer
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Craig Jorgensen is a computer programmer. He received his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics/Physics from Utah State University and his Masters degree in Computer Science from University of New Mexico. He has experience with Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, Geometric Modeling, and Graphical User Interface Design. He generally programs in Java, C#, C/C++ or Visual Basic but has had practical experience with other languages (Scheme, Lisp, TCL/TK, PERL, etc.).