Bio

Victor is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES), University of British Columbia, supervised by Dr. Milind Kandlikar and Dr. Simon Donner. His research develops methodological and analytical frameworks at the intersection of climate science, disaster risk, and climate finance.

His dissertation addresses a fundamental identification problem in disaster–finance research. A systematic review of the empirical literature on natural disasters and microfinance institutions reveals a “correlational ceiling”: no published study employs instrumental variable methodology with climatological instruments, despite their extensive use in adjacent fields. To break this ceiling, he develops a physics-based framework of climatological instrumental variables derived from the Genesis Potential Index, the multiplicative interaction of necessary conditions for tropical cyclone formation. Three theorems establish identification, channel isolation (reducing correlation with alternative economic pathways), and cross-basin transferability, validated across four ocean basins and over 2,000 storms.

A second research stream builds the first compound flood risk assessment for Metro Vancouver’s critical coastal infrastructure: electrical substations, port terminals, transit systems, and water/wastewater facilities. Using the CLIMADA probabilistic risk platform, this work produces loss exceedance curves under multiple sea-level-rise scenarios that incorporate Fraser Delta subsidence currently excluded from provincial guidelines, models compound coastal-riverine flooding through copula-based joint probability methods, and captures cascading failures across interconnected infrastructure networks.

His broader research program extends to three additional areas: optimal sovereign disaster risk layering, formulated as a stochastic dynamic program that identifies threshold conditions under which pre-arranged financing becomes a debt trap rather than a safety net; energy portfolio transition dynamics, modeling how the profitability barrier between fossil and renewable assets (not the cost of capital) constrains reallocation speed; and climate finance disclosure in British Columbia, analyzing alignment gaps between OSFI’s Guideline B-15, TCFD, and IFRS S2 standards across federal and provincial governance levels.

Victor brings over twenty years of experience across approximately thirty countries in disaster risk financing, having consulted for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, UNDP, and UNDRR, among others. He is a member of the Technical Expert Group on Comprehensive Risk Management under the UNFCCC Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. He holds a B.A. in Economics from ITAM (Mexico) and a Master in Finance from IE Business School (Madrid).