Chris Zevenbergen

Chris Zevenbergen (1958) came in September 2005 as an Associate Professor (0,2 fte) to the Department of Urban Water and Sanitation in the core Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Systems (SUIS) at UNESCO-IHE.

As of February 2007 he is appointed as Professor of Flood Resilience of Urban Systems (0,2 fte) in that same Department. He is also managing director of the Business Development Department of DuraVermeer Group NV.

He has a masters in ecology from the Agricultural University Wageningen and a doctorate in environmental engineering from the University Utrecht. He worked as a researcher on various environmental issues related to the building industry, such as environmental impact assessments, product development, emission modelling, testing procedures, building codes and guidelines in the 1980s followed by 10 years research and consultancy in environmental engineering and water management.

In the past 7 years he has accumulated extensive national and international experience with integrated approaches to manage floods in urban environments. His main research interests are on the development of strategies, concepts, and technology to mitigate urban flood impacts.

He has a strong affinity with the ecological, socio-economic, institutional aspects of urban planning and water management.

He is member of the board of the Dutch Living with Water programme and the Netherlands Water Partnership, member of the Japanese-Dutch platform on Water Management and chairman of the EU COST action C22 on Urban Flood Management.

In the past 10 years he participated in various technical advisory boards of governmental bodies and was invited speaker in many national and international conferences.

He holds several patents in the field of environmental engineering and delta-technology. On these research topics he has published about 40 articles and edited 3 books.