Marthe Wens is an Assistant Professor at the Water and Climate Risk group and Environmental Policy Analysis group of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam.

In 2022 Marthe was a postdoc at the Water and Climate Risk group working on the EDORA project.

Marthe successfully defended her PhD research in 2022. Her PhD concerned assessing drought risk in Eastern Africa, under various trends such as climate change and socio-economic development. She is currently investigating ways to improve drought risk profiles through the use of Machine Learning and Agent-Based modelling techniques. Besides, she is developing a socio-hydrologic, agent-based model which simulates the adaptation decisions influencing agricultural drought risk through time. Therefore, she uses data on adaptive behaviour among smallholder farmers and national decision makers, collected through collaboration with SEKU university in Kenya.

Her PhD research is part of the VICI grant of Dr Jeroen Aerts “global trends in simulating flood / drought risk and the influence of human behavior on flood / drought risk “. Besides, she collaborates in projects together with UNDRR, CIMA Research Foundation, the South Eastern Kenyan University, the 510 Initiative and the Kenyan Red Cross Society.

In addition, Marthe is also part of Panta Rhei network (Drought in the Anthropocene working group) and the Dutch Drought Research group.

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