Hans de Moel has been employed at the Institute for Environmental Studies since 2003 and currently works as an assistant professor in the field of flood risk management, climate change and adaptation. He is a certified university lecturer and teaches various BSc (Earth and Economy and Earth Sciences programs) and MSc (Environment and Resource Management program) courses. He aims to look in an integrated way at the natural system with its hazards, the impacts it can have on society and how this relates to the management of these hazards. Academic interests are in the fields of flood risk management, water resources, hydrological modelling, land-use change, climate change (past and future), adaptation, and uncertainty analyses. The main focus of his research has been on flood risks, particularly the development and application of models assessing the consequences (damage/risk) of flooding. He has developed flood and risk models for, amongst others, the Netherlands (local and national scale), New York City and Ho-Chi-Minh City. He uses such models to support risk-based decision making by evaluating various adaptation measures and strategies, assessing the impact of climate change and socio-economic growth, and investigate uncertainties and sensitivities of such assessments and subsequent decisions. Besides flood risk management, he is also involved in various other research fields. He uses hydrological modelling at various scales (small catchments to global) to investigate water scarcity, impacts of climate change and land management on coral reefs and the provisioning of ecosystem services. Additionally, he has worked on ocean acidification, land-use change, and food losses. Currently, he is involved in EU FP7 TURAS project on urban resilience and sustainability, the Dutch Knowledge for Climate project ‘Climate-proof Flood Risk Management’ and the TEEB for Tana study in Kenya.

Water and Climate Risk Studies