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Researcher

Dirk Vrebos

  • Research Expertise:Dr. Dirk Vrebos has been a researcher at the Ecosystem Management Research Group since 2009 and conducts research into climate adaptation, ecosystem services, water management and spatial planning. Over the years, he has specialized in the spatial evaluation of water-related data, ecosystem services and soil functions in Flanders and Europe. As a result, he has broad theoretical and practical knowledge of these topics, as well as extensive experience in the use of various GIS and statistical programs and techniques and a broad knowledge of the available GIS data and databases that are relevant for spatial policy in Flanders. From 2009 to 2012, he worked on his PhD thesis entitled “Understanding flows for integrated water management: water quality, quantity and ecosystem services.” Within this thesis, extensive knowledge was gained on the general functioning of a catchment system, the statistical analysis of water quantity and quality data and the construction and integration of different types of spatial data. During this period he was also involved in the FP7 project 'AFROMAISON' which researched Integrated Natural Resources Management' in Africa and developed a methodology to evaluate ecosystem services in data-poor regions. From 2012 to 2016 he mainly worked on the ECOPLAN (IWT-SBO) project "Planning for Ecosystem Services". Within this project he was responsible for the development of a QGIS plugin that can calculate the delivery of a range of ecosystem services within Flanders. When developing this plug-in, specific Flemish ecosystem services studies as well as a large number of Flemish (GIS) datasets were used. These data were translated into models for the evaluation of ecosystem services as well as spatial input maps (eg land cover) that are necessary for the ecosystem services calculations at the Flemish level. In the Horizon 2020 project LANDMARK (2015 – 2019) he worked as an overarching post-doctoral researcher. He was responsible for the evaluation of European policy on the functioning of soil functions in agricultural areas. To this end, a series of Bayesian networks were developed that allowed to evaluate the impact of certain policy scenarios on these soil functions. In the period 2018-2019 he was responsible for the technical development of a QGIS plug-in for the evaluation of ecosystem services in Estuaries (INTERREG project Smartsediment). In addition, he also contributed to the development of a global socio-economic impact analysis of the implementation of the Flemish NATURA-2000 programme. Since 2019 he has been working on the FWO-SBO project EcoCities in which he develops developing a GIS tool to calculate the impact of green roofs on the ecosystem services delivery. He is also involved in a number of other projects such as the INTERREG 2 SEAS project “PROWATER" (Protection and restoration of groundwater systems at landscape level), the HORIZON 2020 project UPSURGE (Nature-based solutions for climate adaptation in cities) and the FWO-SBO project TURQUOISE (Blue-green strategies for climate adaptation).
  • Keywords:INTEGRATED WATER MANAGEMENT, ECOHYDROLOGY, ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION, HYDROLOGY, WATER QUALITY, ECOSYSTEM SERVICES, ECOSYSTEM FUNCTION, CATCHMENT PLANNING, Biology
  • Disciplines:Animal biology, Bioinformatics and computational biology, Ecology, Evolutionary biology, General biology, Genetics, Microbiology, Molecular and cell biology, Plant biology, Systems biology, Other biological sciences, Other natural sciences
  • Research techniques:The following techniques are mainly used during the different types of research: • Collecting and integrating existing knowledge through scientifically based literature studies. • The development of additional knowledge through data analysis by means of uni- and multivariate statistical analyzes in R, Python and SAS. For spatial datasets, modified techniques are applied that take into account the spatial aspect and possible autocorrelations. • Knowledge from literature as well as datasets are analyzed and integrated in Bayesian networks. These networks make it possible to make substantiated predictions in complex systems, taking into account inherent uncertainties. • The collected knowledge is translated into spatial GIS models in ArcGIS, QGIS, GRASS and GDAL. These models can then be integrated into GIS plugins which allow third parties to easily apply the models in their own projects. • Depending on the research, statistics, Bayesian models and GIS models can be integrated with the Python programming language.
  • Users of research expertise:The available knowledge and techniques are used in fundamental scientific, as well as public research and can be widely deployed. Over the years, there has often been collaboration with other research institutions as well as engineering offices in the development and application of spatial analyzes and models. The focus is mainly on landscape analyzes in function of water management, ecosystem services and climate mitigation and adaptation. The available knowledge can be applied from a local scale to a continental level. The available expertise is relevant for: • Research institutes that focus on (fundamental) research into the functioning of water, soil and ecological processes and how these interact with our society. • Engineering offices that carry out projects related to water and landscape management • Government institutions and agencies working on landscape design, ecosystem services and climate adaptation in both an urban and rural context. • Others who need knowledge in the above topics.