Bregje van Wesenbeeck

Dr. Bregje van Wesenbeeck is an expert advisor on coastal zone management with a focus on ecosystem-based adaptation. She uses her system knowledge and project experience to evaluate feasibility of intervention strategies in different coastal environments.

She provides advice and training on integration of the natural and physical system in flood risk management, coastal erosion mitigation and climate change adaptation in projects in amongst others Indonesia, Tonga, Kiribati, the Philippines, the Netherlands and USA. In these projects she defines strategies for risk reduction and climate adaptation based on system characteristics and long-term trends. To determine optimal intervention strategies she outlines all possible risk reduction measures, ranging from green to grey, which allows careful and underbuilt selection of suitable (combinations of) measures.

She is the first author on the World Bank implementation guidelines for nature-based solutions and she laid the basis for a global feasibility framework of green, grey and hybrid climate adaptation measures that is currently being included in the Aqueduct Flood Analyzer. She provides advice and training for local and national governments, engineering firms, NGO’s, UNDP, the WB and research institutes and universities. She collaborates in research networks in the US and EU to advance the knowledge on nature-based risk reduction options. She has a part-time association with the Delft University of Technology where she supervises MSc students in civil engineering and coastal dynamics and teaches courses on ecology and sediment dynamics, Building with Nature and on inclusion of ecosystems in flood risk management.