Marthe Wens is a Ph.D. researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Being part of the Water and Climate research group in the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Free University of Amsterdam, her research concerns the integration of adaptation and mitigation behavior in drought risk and impact analysis. 

2016: Master of Science in Geography, Major Earth & Climate studies,
Minor: GIS and Spatial Modelling

(KU Leuven and VUB Brussels, Belgium)

Wens, M. (2016). Cost-benefit evaluation of soil and water conservation techniques in Tigray.
MSc thesis including 3 months fieldwork executing Choice Experiment and SWC surveys on field

Marthe is developing a socio-hydrologic agent-based model to simulate how the intertwined human-nature might evolve under given governance (i.e. socioeconomic situation), culture (i.e. farmers’ risk perception) and infrastructure (i.e. access to index-based insurance products), while explicitly including the emergent decision behaviour of stakeholders (i.e. of smallholder farmers). By modelling water security and food production as the outcome of a coupled human-natural system that accounts for human adaptability to external drivers, predictions about the impact of future droughts on agriculture can be improved. Besides, the model will be able to evaluate viable drought risk mitigation solutions that address short-term and long-term water scarcity challenges hence can serve as a support tool for the development of strategic drought risk management.

2016 – Jan 2017: Monitoring and Evaluation Intern International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), Amman, Jordan.

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