RIFMA Speakers

Breakout Sessions

Session #1: Mapping RI’s Flood Risk (Moderator: Ron Miner)

Brent McCarthy, P.E., CFM

Brent McCarthy holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Hydrology from the University of New Hampshire. He is a PE in Maine and New Hampshire, and is a Certified Floodplain Manager with the Association of State Floodplain Managers. He has over 25 years of experience in water resources engineering, mostly in New England, concentrating on floodplain management, combined sewer overflow facilities plans, stormwater management, water quality investigations, and dam safety investigations.

He has completed riverine and coastal flood insurance studies in communities throughout New England. He currently manages Watershed Concept’s Boston office.  The Boston office’ primary mission is as FEMA Region I’s “Regional Management Center”.  The Regional Management Center is charged with assisting the region with its goal of modernizing New England’s flood maps.

Carissa Lord, CFM

Carissa has spent the past year working with the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency as a Map Modernization Planner. Recently she has been coordinating with FEMA and local Rhode Island governments on adopting new flood insurance rate maps and FEMA compliant floodplain ordinances.

Originally from New York, Carissa has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dickinson College, a Masters Degree from the University of Rhode Island and recently became the second Certified Floodplain Manager in Rhode Island.

Nancy Hess

As a principal environmental planner for the state of Rhode Island, Nancy Hess provides technical environmental planning expertise to the Statewide Planning Program concerning municipal and statewide planning, land use and natural resource management issues. She performs environmental analysis using GIS and maintains plan review systems with an emphasis on water resources, land use planning, and flood mitigation topics. She reviews plans and grant funding requests to address localized and statewide natural resources, drinking water supply and flooding related issues. She manages technical projects for drinking water protection, conservation of forest resources and drought management. She coordinates with RI towns, state, and federal agencies and planning organizations on these and other topics related to local, regional, and federal planning issues.

Session #2: Coastal Flood Issues in Rhode Island (Moderator: Pam Rubinoff)

John W. King

BA, Special Studies (Biology, Chemistry, Geology) (1975), Franklin & Marshall College

PhD, Geology (1983) , University of Minnesota. Faculty member Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, since 1984.

Current research interests include paleoclimate studies, paleoenvironmental reconstructions, habitat mapping, and pollution studies.

Janet Freedman

Janet Freedman is a Coastal Geologist at the RI Coastal Resources Management Council. She is responsible for developing and implementing policy related to coastal hazards, evaluating erosion control techniques, incorporating the beneficial re-use of dredged materials, and mapping shoreline changes. In addition she is project coordinator for several habitat restoration projects; including submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) restoration in the Rhode Island South Shore coastal ponds, and salt marsh restoration at Allin’s Cove. She has a Masters degree from the University of Rhode Island Department of Geosciences where she studied late Pleistocene climate change.

Session #3: Better Building Standards and Insuring for Risk (Moderator: Erik Skadberg)

David Vallee

David R. Vallee is the Hydrologist-in-Charge of NOAA/National Weather Service’s Northeast River Forecast Center. The center provides river forecasts for nearly 200 locations in New England and New York State, as well as flash flood guidance for small streams, extended stream flow predictions, and water resource information in collaboration with local Weather Forecast Offices.

David is a life-long Rhode Islander and is recognized as a resident expert on the behavior and impacts of New England Hurricanes, including the forecasting of heavy rainfall and river flooding associated with these systems.

John Squerciati

Mr. John Squerciati, P.E., is an Associate at Dewberry & Davis LLC in Fairfax, Virginia. He has nine years of post-disaster damage assessment and hazard mitigation experience under Dewberry & Davis’ Technical Assistance Contracts with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He has worked on numerous natural disasters - including floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes - as well as terrorist events. Mr. Squerciati has provided assistance in the development of several FEMA policy and technical documents including, FEMA 259, Engineering Principles and Practices for Retrofitting Flood Prone Residential Buildings, FEMA 348, Protecting Building Utilities From Flood Damage, FEMA 488, Mitigation Assessment Team Report: Hurricane Charley in Florida, and FEMA 549, Mitigation Assessment Team Report: Hurricane Katrina in The Gulf Coast. Mr. Squerciati has also served as an instructor for courses at FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute as well as numerous field training workshops. Mr. Squerciati is a licensed professional engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

David Odeh

David J. Odeh, P.E. is a structural engineer with over 14 years of experience in the investigation, design, and analysis of buildings for natural disasters.  He has published numerous articles on natural hazards modeling and structural design, including a recent study of statewide disaster risk in Rhode Island that appeared in Natural Hazards Review.

Mr. Odeh is a principal at Odeh Engineers, Inc., a 30-person structural design and consulting firm based in Providence, and a past president of the Structural Engineers Association of Rhode Island.  He also serves on the adjunct faculty of Brown University in Providence.

Dennis Charland

Dennis has 29 year of experience in the insurance industry. He has spent almost 4 years as Executive Director of the Independent Insurance Agents of RI. Prior to his role at the IIARI, Dennis was with Utica Mutual Insurance in their marketing and loss control department for 13 years. He was with Crum & Foster Insurance for 8 years, Western Employees Insurance for 2 years and he also served 2 years as Executive Director for the RI Inter-local Risk Management (self insurance program for RI cities and towns).

Dennis graduated from the University of New Haven in 1978. He was RI born and raised; currently residing in Scituate. In his free time he is a volunteer fire fighter with the North Scituate Fire Department. Here Dennis has had many roles including, Chief, Assistant Deputy State Fire Marshall and EMT.

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