About
D.Eng., P.E., CFM | Staff Water Resources Engineer
Aalok Sharma Kafle is a water-resources engineer focused on flood resilience, hydrologic and hydraulic analysis, GIS-enabled planning, and data-driven decision support. His professional work combines rigorous technical analysis with tools that make complex infrastructure decisions more transparent and usable for agencies and stakeholders.
Aalok earned a Doctor of Engineering in Civil Engineering from Lamar University and an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Texas Tech University. His doctoral work examined decision-support systems for resilient flood planning and hydraulic design, and his work includes HCFCD watershed studies, flood-mitigation alternatives, benefit-framework automation, and infrastructure prioritization.
Current work brings together hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, GIS analytics, automation, and multi-criteria decision methods to support public-sector flood resilience and infrastructure planning.
June 2025 - Present
Staff Water Resources Engineer
Develops data-driven flood resilience and mitigation-planning workflows; contributes to the SAFER Study for Harris County watersheds; automates benefit calculations; and builds GIS, web-map, and decision-support tools for engineering teams and public agencies.
2022 - 2025
Research Assistant
Conducted research on resilient flood planning, hydraulic design, flood frequency, nonstationarity, machine learning, flood susceptibility, and multi-criteria decision making.
2019 - 2022
Research Assistant
Developed hydro-climatological data resources and conducted groundwater vulnerability, water-quality, and drought-resilience analyses using GIS, R, Python, and statistical methods.
2017 - 2019
Civil Engineer, Water Resources
Supported water quantity and water-quality modeling, groundwater analysis, field data collection, and infrastructure planning in the Kathmandu Valley.
2017 - 2019
Lecturer
Developed and delivered instruction in fluid mechanics, hydrology, surveying, data analysis, and engineering software applications.
Supports flood-resiliency strategies for the Sims Bayou, Clear Creek, and Vince Bayou watersheds with infraTECH, HDR, public agencies, ArcGIS, dashboards, and Python-based spatial analysis.
Adapted an AHP/TOPSIS-based framework for Harris County Flood Control District and City of Baytown alternatives, comparing flood-reduction benefits, cost, right-of-way, constructability, maintenance, safety, and planning criteria.
Applied H&H indicators, exposure, economic efficiency, and socioeconomic vulnerability in a browser-based framework that allows stakeholders to test weighting scenarios and update project rankings.
Partners with infraTECH and DCCM to automate benefit computations with Python and GIS ModelBuilder workflows, improving the efficiency, consistency, and traceability of flood-mitigation evaluations.
Developed an R package for flood-frequency analysis using stochastic methods, peaks over threshold, and copula theory to support nonstationary flood-risk assessment.
Led hydrologic assessments, hydrodynamic modeling, and engineering recommendations for Pine Island Bayou and the Lower Neches River using HEC-HMS, EEMS, GIS, R, and Python.
Developed a multi-criteria model to rank Texas coastal watersheds by flood susceptibility and impacts on people and infrastructure.
Applied machine learning, probabilistic methods, remote sensing, and hydrologic indices to groundwater vulnerability, drought analysis, land-use change, and climate-risk questions.
Doctor of Engineering in Civil Engineering
Lamar University, 2025 | 4.0 GPA
M.S. in Civil Engineering
Texas Tech University, 2021 | 4.0 GPA
Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering
Tribhuvan University, Khwopa College of Engineering, 2018
Dissertation: Decision Support Systems for Resilient Flood Planning and Hydraulic Design.
HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS, ArcGIS, QGIS, SAGA GIS, SWAT, PostgreSQL, MicroStation, AutoCAD, MODFLOW, EPA SWMM, machine learning, quantitative analysis, risk assessment, and resource optimization.
Programming: Python, R, and SQL.
Doctoral dissertation, Lamar University-Beaumont, 2025.
Natural Hazards Review, 2025.
Natural Hazards Research, 2025.
World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, 2024.
World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, 2024.
Texas Water 2024 Conference; first runner-up in the presentation competition.
For professional collaboration, technical discussion, or project inquiries: