About

Professor Costa Samaras is engaged in research related to climate change adaptation, the future of transportation, automation and energy, and the future of the electricity system, with a focus on AI, energy, and climate issues. His work encompasses a broad range of topics including energy security, decarbonization, sustainable transportation, water resource impacts, and the integration of renewable energy into the grid. He has supervised numerous doctoral and master's students on projects addressing resilience in energy and water systems, decarbonization strategies, and sustainable infrastructure, reflecting his commitment to advancing solutions for climate and energy challenges. His contributions are characterized by a focus on policy-relevant research aimed at improving resilience, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and fostering sustainable development in the context of evolving technological and environmental landscapes.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Economics
• Business
• Natural resource economics
• Engineering
• Transport engineering
• Geography
• Meteorology
• Computer Science
• Climatology
• Computer Security
• Geology
• Mathematics
• Automotive engineering
• Cartography
• Environmental protection
• Econometrics
• Economy
• Aeronautics
• Demographic economics
• Environmental resource management
• Statistics
• Risk analysis (engineering)
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• Climate change risk index and municipal bond disclosures of United States drinking water utilities

  Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (University of Maryland College Park) · 2026-01-26

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Climate change increases risks to the operations and financial reliability of drinking water utilities across the United States (US). Here we develop a comparative climate risk index that includes hazard, vulnerability, and exposure components for 1455 medium and large municipal US drinking water utilities. We find that 67 million customers are serviced by utilities with higher climate risk. Drinking water utilities in the Western US have higher risk due to expected large changes in climate hazards, while utilities in the Northeast and Midwest have higher risk due to existing vulnerabilities and exposure. We use this climate risk index, along with an analysis of municipal bond official statements, to identify utilities in need of climate adaptation and resilience planning. Of the analyzed bonds, 36% were issued by high risk utilities and didn’t mention climate change. This work offers recommendations for multiple decision-makers, including utility customers, bond purchasers, and government agencies.

  PublisherDOI

• Characterizing uncertainties in residential electrification: Financial feasibility, climate impacts, and health outcomes

  Applied Energy · 2026-03-05

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Low-to-moderate-income (LMI) families in the United States face disproportionately high energy costs due to inefficient housing and systemic underinvestment. Residential end-use electrification can deliver benefits to households and the broader public, depending on fuel type, technology, valuation methods, and other factors. This study extends prior residential electrification feasibility analyses by evaluating how Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) rebates and the monetization of climate and health co-benefits jointly affect the cost-effectiveness and adoption potential of residential energy efficiency and electrification retrofits. We define adoption potential as the share of households achieving a positive net present value (NPV) from retrofits, categorized into tiers: Tier 1 (households can recover total capital costs), Tier 2 (households can recover incremental upgrade costs relative to replacing existing equipment), and Tier 3 (additional subsidies justified by public benefits help households reach Tier 2). We find that heat pump water heaters show nearly universal adoption potential, suggesting prioritizing heat pump water heaters as accessible electrification entry points. Air-source heat pump (ASHP) retrofits exhibit fuel-specific adoption patterns, with ASHP adoption potential reaching up to 38% under IRA provisions. Heat pump clothes dryers and electric cooking ranges follow similar patterns to water heaters, though less pronounced. We also find that ASHP upgrades can reduce economic damages from criteria pollutant exposure in 85–96% of households. Moreover, we find that accounting for monetized public benefits from avoided greenhouse gas emissions can more than double ASHP adoption potential. Overall, this study highlights the value of societal impact assessment and robust uncertainty analysis in policy evaluation. • Heat pump water heaters demonstrate nearly universal LMI adoption potential. • ASHP retrofits in LMI households range from 30% (natural gas) to 91% (fuel oil). • Monetizing climate benefits can increase adoption potential for gas users by >60%. • Electrifying heating in 85–96% of households would improve air quality benefits. • Fuel-specific policies can promote beneficial space heating electrification.

  PublisherDOI

• Determining U.S. residential primary heating fuels for energy analysis and planning

  Environmental Research Energy · 2026-05-07

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This dataset and toolkit provide census tract-level information on primary residential heating fuel used across the United States for three time periods: 2011-2015, 2016-2020, and 2019-2023. The data are derived from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, accessed through the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS). For all census tracts in each 5-year time period, the dataset includes the counts of occupied housing units using each of ten heating fuel types: utility natural gas, bottled/tank/LP gas (propane), electricity, fuel oil/kerosene, coal/coke, wood, solar energy, other fuel, and no fuel used. The accompanying codebase provides a complete, documented workflow that loads raw NHGIS data, calculates fuel usage percentages, and identifies dominant fuel types by census tract. The workflow then merges tabular data with geographic boundaries and generates publication-ready maps for both individual years and multi-year comparisons.

The processing code is publicly available and includes complete setup instructions, enabling rapid heating fuel analysis when future data are released. Raw and processed data files are deposited on Zenodo. This resource supports research on residential energy analysis and energy transitions, electrification pathways, environmental justice, and regional energy system planning by providing readily analyzable, quality-controlled heating fuel data at high spatial and temporal resolution. For the 2019-2023 period, the dominant primary residential heating fuels by census tract were natural gas (55.2%), electricity (38.2%), fuel oil (3.5%), and propane (2.7%). We found that while useful, the dominant heating fuel analysis tends to overrepresent the prevalence of natural gas (by roughly 8-10% depending on the 5-year average period) and underrepresent the prevalence of other fuels as a result of failing to achieve plurality. The RECS 2024 initial release did not yet include heating fuel data, so RECS 2024 data were not incorporated into the external data validation process in this dataset article.

  PublisherDOI

• Climate change risk index and municipal bond disclosures of United States drinking water utilities

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2026-01-26

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Climate change increases risks to the operations and financial reliability of drinking water utilities across the United States (US). Here we develop a comparative climate risk index that includes hazard, vulnerability, and exposure components for 1455 medium and large municipal US drinking water utilities. We find that 67 million customers are serviced by utilities with higher climate risk. Drinking water utilities in the Western US have higher risk due to expected large changes in climate hazards, while utilities in the Northeast and Midwest have higher risk due to existing vulnerabilities and exposure. We use this climate risk index, along with an analysis of municipal bond official statements, to identify utilities in need of climate adaptation and resilience planning. Of the analyzed bonds, 36% were issued by high risk utilities and didn’t mention climate change. This work offers recommendations for multiple decision-makers, including utility customers, bond purchasers, and government agencies. 67 million customers across the US rely on drinking water utilities that face higher climate risk than accounted for, which exposes major gaps in climate adaptation and resilience planning, suggests an assessment of vulnerability, exposure, and hazards across 1,455 municipal utilities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assessment of Vulnerability to Disruptions to the Supply of Semiconductors

  Journal of Risk Research · 2025-08-11

  preprintOpen access

  <title>Abstract</title> While semiconductor supply chain vulnerabilities draw significant attention, the consequences of losing access to specific semiconductor devices remain poorly understood. We combine structured interviews with 21 semiconductor experts across six sectors with component origin analysis of an FPV drone and smartphone to assess for which devices and process nodes loss of access would be most catastrophic. Experts indicated that existing infrastructure—grid, data centers, defense, transportation—would maintain operations for years due to semiconductor durability and stockpiling. Instead, the primary impact would be the inability to produce new products and expand infrastructure. All expert-proposed substitution strategies required 18-36 months to execute, suggesting that reducing these constraints may be important to improve crisis response and longer-term resilience. These findings suggest industry and policymakers should evaluate the costs and benefits of strategies to accelerate substitution, such as design precertification, component standardization, or modular architectures.

  PublisherDOI

• Characterizing uncertainties in residential electrification: Financial feasibility, climate impacts, and health outcomes for equitable policy design

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Empirically-Calibrated H100 Node Power Models for Reducing Uncertainty in AI Training Energy Estimation

  ArXiv.org · 2025-06-17

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  As AI's energy demand continues to grow, it is critical to enhance the understanding of characteristics of this demand, to improve grid infrastructure planning and environmental assessment. By combining empirical measurements from Brookhaven National Laboratory during AI training on 8-GPU H100 systems with open-source benchmarking data, we develop statistical models relating computational intensity to node-level power consumption. We measure the gap between manufacturer-rated thermal design power (TDP) and actual power demand during AI training. Our analysis reveals that even computationally intensive workloads operate at only 76% of the 10.2 kW TDP rating. Our architecture-specific model, calibrated to floating-point operations, predicts energy consumption with 11.4% mean absolute percentage error, significantly outperforming TDP-based approaches (27-37% error). We identified distinct power signatures between transformer and CNN architectures, with transformers showing characteristic fluctuations that may impact grid stability.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Decarbonization can improve energy security

  Nature Climate Change · 2025-04-09 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Bridging the gap: riverine nature-based solutions for climate resilient transportation infrastructure in the United States

  npj Urban Sustainability · 2025-05-20 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Nature-based solutions (NBS) can serve as important tools for managing climate risks to transportation infrastructure in the riverine environment. We synthesized reports, guidelines, and conversations with stakeholders regarding the use of riverine NBS alongside transportation infrastructure in the United States. We discuss challenges for transportation projects incorporating riverine NBS and present potential solutions as an action-oriented research agenda to drive the use of riverine NBS for climate-resilient transportation infrastructure.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Climate change hazard index reveals combined risks to United States drinking water utilities

  Environmental Research Climate · 2025-01-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Drinking water utilities are exposed to a range of climate change hazards that can affect their ability to deliver safe drinking water. We use climate change mid-century projections to assess seven hazards for 42 786 utility systems (serving 283 million people) across the contiguous United States and develop a combined climate hazard index that allows for risk comparisons. All utilities are exposed to climate hazards, and around half, serving 178 million people (53% of current population), could experience large changes in one or more climate hazards that could affect an aspect of system reliability, including water resources, infrastructure, or operations. While utilities located in Western regions and coastal areas have higher climate hazard index values, there are utilities serving different population sizes in all geographic regions with elevated climate risk. Few utilities have developed climate adaptation plans and many may have existing vulnerabilities. This index provides multiple stakeholders, including utilities, regulators, and investors, with usable and accessible climate information.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Concepts for Advancing Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS) Research Networks: Sustainable Integration of Urban Automation

  NSF · $50k · 2019–2020

• Collaborative Research: Characterizing 21st Century Extremes for Engineering and Evaluating Robust Infrastructure Designs

  NSF · $326k · 2016–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Paulina Jaramillo

  Carnegie Mellon University

  27 shared

• H. Scott Matthews

  ORCID

  25 shared

• T. P. Lopez-Cantu

  Environmental Systems Research Institute (United States)

  19 shared

• Corey D. Harper

  14 shared

• Aimee E. Curtright

  Carnegie Mellon University

  13 shared

• Chris Hendrickson

  Carnegie Mellon University

  13 shared

• Lauren M. Cook

  Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

  12 shared

• Joe Marriott

  University of Pittsburgh

  11 shared

Labs

• Costa Samaras LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy

  Carnegie Mellon University

• Other, Public Policy

  Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University

• B.S., Civil Engineering

  Bucknell University

Awards & honors

• Professor of the Year by the Pittsburgh Section of the Ameri…