Cees Van Westen

Cees van Westen is associate professor Natural Hazards and Risk Assessment at the Earth System Analysis Group at the faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Twente University, the Netherlands. After obtaining his MSc in Physical Geography from the University of Amsterdam in 1988, he joined the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) as PhD researcher, and specialized in the use of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems for natural hazard and risk assessment. He obtained his PhD from the University of Delft in 1993. He was involved in projects related to the development of open source GIS software and developed many training materials on the use of GIs for hazard and risk assessment. From 2005- 2015 he was Director of the United Nations University - ITC Centre on Geoinformation for Disaster Risk Management. He has carried out research on different hazard and risk related aspects: landslide hazard and risk (e.g. Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Romania, India, China, Vietnam, Colombia, Central America, Caribbean), volcanic hazard and risk assessment (Colombia, Philippines, Central America, South America) and technological risk assessment (India). He worked on national scale risk assessment projects in Central America, Caribbean, and Caucasus. His current research interest is to develop methods for the analysis of changing multi-hazard risk. These changes can be abrupt, e.g. after major disasters (e.g. earthquakes, tropical storms, volcanic eruptions), or gradual (e.g. analysing how future scenarios of climate change, land use change and population change have impact on risk) or as decision support tool for the planning of risk reduction measures.