About Mindert de Vries

Prof. De Vries is a senior advisor specialised in environmental impact assessment and integrated coastal zone management at Deltares. He has extensive knowledge on ecological aspects, habitat suitability evaluation, nature restoration and impacts of water- and sediment pollution for species and ecosystems. Mr. De Vries is a senior project leader of many advisory and research studies within the Netherlands and abroad, particularly in the United States, Middle East and Southeast Asia. Mr. De Vries has a background in (marine) aquatic ecology, eco-toxicology and mathematical biology. He has been involved in many studies regarding model development and application for both fresh water and marine systems. For many years he was involved in organising and execution of environmental impact assessments, integrated coastal zone management studies.

At present he specialises in research integrating biology and geomorphology, related to morphodynamics in coastal and estuarine ecosystems. Mindert has worked on dynamics of saltmarshes in relation to physical forcing, sediment transport in many ecosystems. His experience is based on field work, work in large scale experimental facilities and numerical modelling (Delft3D and XBeach). Within Deltares, Mr. De Vries is the principal coordinator and inspirator for the development of interdisciplinary Eco-Morphological research projects and applied eco-engineering solutions for safety against flooding.

For many years, Mr. De Vries has worked part-time as researcher for the Delft University of Technology and the University of Technology in Twente. He maintains extensive networks with the science, consulting and engineering communities, such as Netherlands Centre for Coastal Research (NCK), Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP), UNESCO-IHE, Building with Nature (BwN) – Ecoshape. Since 2010, Mr. De Vries is Professor Building with Living Nature at the University of Applied Science Hogeschool Zeeland.

Mr. De Vries has extensively worked on overseas projects, amongst others in Vietnam, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand, as well as in several other countries in the world. At present he is involved in the coastal theme of the Mekong Delta Programme, a project jointly developed by the Netherlands and the Vietnamese governments and working as project coordinator for the FAST (Foreshore Assessment using Space Technology) project. This project is funded by the European Union’s (EU) Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) for research, technological development and demonstration. FAST is developing down-stream services for the European Earth Observation Programme Copernicus to support cost-effective, nature-based shoreline protection against flooding and erosion.