About Frans van de Ven

Frans van de Ven is leader of the Urban Land & Water Management team at Deltares, and he is associate professor of Urban Water Management at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Delft University of Technology. He holds a PhD in Hydrology and is leading research worldwide on creating sustainable cities, making them climate resilient, flood and drought proof and subsidence-free. This includes research on improved concepts for urban flood and water management, other ways or urban planning and design and water quality control, blue-green solutions and energy harvesting from water.

After obtaining his MSc degree in Land & Water Management at Wageningen University in 1979 he joined the IJsselmeerpolders Development Authority, where he investigated rainfall runoff processes in urban areas and urban water quality. He was expert-advisor on geohydrology and groundwater resources management to the drinking water company and the province.In 1986 he joined Rijkswaterstaat’s Institute of Inland Water Management and Wastewater Treatment. He did research on operational flood forecasting models, hydrological and ecological modeling and remote sensing and initiated and lead research programmes on dehydration, policy development tools and “Living with Water”.

Van de Ven was appointed as part-time associate professor at Delft University of Technology in 2004. His research fields include stormwater drainage and infiltration processes, design of drainage facilities, urban water quality management, building site planning and preparation and climate resilient urban water management planning. He aims at developing new concepts for sustainable and resilient urban water management.

In May 2008 Van de Ven joined Deltares, where he and his team started research activities on climate resilience of cities, urban flooding and impact reduction, on creating adaptable cities and on the concept of the “closed city” – aimed at enhancing the functional use of all types of water in the urban area. Over the past couple of years, adaptation for drought ad land subsidence control in urban areas, water supply and water resources management as well as effectiveness and applicability of blue green solutions for urban flood, drought and heat management were added to the pallet of ongoing research projects.