Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm,
announced that Siamak Esfandiary, Ph.D., PE, has been hired as a senior
associate in the firm’s Fairfax, Virginia, office.
Esfandiary has nearly 20 years of experience in water
resources engineering and flood risk management. He previously worked for the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for 11 years, where he worked
closely with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) headquarters, risk
management center, and hydrologic engineering center on a variety of flood risk
management topics, including strategies for implementing the National Levee
Safety Program. Esfandiary also advised the National Dam Safety program manager
on technical and programmatic issues and worked closely with the National Dam
Safety review board. He was the technical lead for FEMA’s levee analysis and
mapping procedures, and wrote FEMA’s procedure memorandum No.63, “Guidance for
Reviewing Levee Accreditation Submittals.” Esfandiary was an integral member of
FEMA’s Risk Rating 2.0 team, where he designed and proposed the Probabilistic
Flood Risk Assessment.
Esfandiary was a member and the chairman of the
subcommittee on hydrology that operates under the U.S. Geological Survey’s
advisory committee on water information, which published Bulletin 17C,
“Guidelines for Determining Flood Flow Frequency.” He managed two National
Academies of Sciences’ studies for FEMA, “Framing the Challenge of Urban Flooding
in the United States,” that was published in 2019; and “Levees and the
National Flood Insurance Program: Improving Policies and Practices,” in 2013.
He also represented FEMA as a contributing author in developing a comprehensive
resource document titled “International Levee Handbook,” in collaboration with
the Department of Homeland Security, USACE, the National Committee on Levee
Safety, and European countries.
Prior to working for FEMA, Esfandiary served as a
project manager at Dewberry from 2004-2008, where he managed numerous flood
studies across the U.S.
“We are excited to welcome Siamak back to Dewberry,”
says Dewberry Senior Vice President Jerry Sparks, PE, CFM. “He brings extensive
knowledge of FEMA’s flood programs and has worked with a variety of federal
agencies, and we’re glad to have his expertise for our clients.”
Esfandiary obtained his doctorate (2001) and his
master’s degree in civil engineering (1997) from the City University of New
York. He earned his bachelor’s degree in irrigation engineering from the
Isfahan University of Technology (1996), and is a member of the American Water
Works Association and the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
