About Sophie Vermooten

Sophie Vermooten is a hydrogeologist (groundwater specialist) with a French background. Her experience in groundwater studies covers groundwater modeling, Geographic Information Systems, groundwater resources assessment (quantity and quality). She has worked in different countries: China, Syria, Yemen, Italy and Australia as groundwater modeller and has been involved in training on the job of Syrian, Chinese, Italian, Mongolian and North African experts. In 2008, she was posted at the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands in Beijing at the scientific and technical department for a period of 6 month to investigate the level of expertise in the field of groundwater management and soil pollution. From 2006 to 2010 she worked at IGRAC (the UN International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre, http://www.un-igrac.org) in the Global groundwater monitoring and the transboundary groundwater programme at Deltares, she coordinated a large EU research project (DEWFORA) on drought monitoring, forecasting, mitigation and adaptation in Africa working with 19 partners from the African and European continent. She was leading a project on conceptual models for all the WFD groundwater bodies of the Netherlands. She is involved in the working Group C on the theme of the impact of climate change on groundwater.

In addition to her work focusing currently on groundwater assessment frameworks and ecosystem services, she is the Deltares coordinator for the Europe region, responsible among others for the business development in that region.