Nexus Project Cluster

The Nexus Project Cluster is a group of independent research initiatives who team up for increased and more impacting communication and dissemination of the Nexus. The Nexus includes sectors like water, energy, food, land and climate, as well as important societal challenges like public health and rural-urban development. We also consider alignment with circular economy projects provided that they are linked to the concept of the Nexus. The Cluster started in 2018 and initially run until 2020. More information by e-mail to Floor Brouwer.

Science-policy

The Cluster will initiate stakeholder interaction on the Nexus. We create synergies and an added value in aligning our research outcomes and jointly launch policy awareness-raising. We interact with the European Commission (including EASME as the Executive Agency to co-ordinate Nexus-related research actions).

Science

The Cluster is open to communication and knowledge sharing, such as exchange of methodologies, approaches, tools, datasets, case study contacts and results. We provide added value to individual actions by the different projects, in organising larger-scale and inter-team actions. We write joint publications.

Policy

We especially focus at improved and mutual learning on policy coherence and synergies across the relevant Nexus sectors. We support policy documents and discussions, using the Nexus concept.

Our Steering Committee

with members from SIM4NEXUS, DAFNE and UNU-FLORES

Floor Brouwer (Wageningen Research, the Netherlands)

Floor Brouwer is scientific coordinator of SIM4NEXUS, and leading the Steering Committee of the Nexus Project Cluster. He is committed the Cluster will share the knowledge on the Nexus for policy support. In doing so, society will benefit from the sustainable management of natural resources.

Guido Schmidt

Guido Schmidt is senior policy expert at Fresh-Thoughts Consulting GmbH (Austria), with 25 years’ experience about better understanding, preventing and/or solving water and environmental problems and conflicts, such as with irrigation and hydropower. He understands the Nexus approach as a tool to improve understanding across sectors and identifying synergies at policy and management levels. Guido is leading the work package on communications of SIM4NEXUS, and has recently assessed the Nexus performance in South Eastern Europe for GWP-Med.

Phoebe Koundouri

Prof. Dr. Phoebe Koundouri is a Professor of Economic and Econometric Theory and Applications (focused on natural resources, energy and the environment) at the Athens University of Economics and Business, in Greece. She is the Founder and Scientific Director of the Research Laboratory ReSEES - Researchon Socio-Economic and Environmental Sustainability of the same University. She is the director of EIT Climate KIC- Greece, co-chair of the UN Sustainable Development Network- Greece, Founder and Scientific Chair of the International Center for Research on the Economy and the Environment (ICRE8), vice-chair of European Forest Institute and Visiting Professor at London School of Economics. Ranked in the top 1% of all female economists in the world, she has published 15 books, and hundreds of scientific papers, while she has coordinated numerous applied projects worldwide and consulted all major International Organizations in the area of energy and natural resource management and investments. Professor Koundouri has a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge, where she also held academic positions.

Chrysi Laspidou

Chrysi Laspidou is an Associate Professor at the Civil Engineering Department, University of Thessaly in Greece. Her research interests include resource Nexus and water informatics, mathematical modeling and simulation of physical-chemical and biological processes that take place in natural aquatic systems and other ecosystems, as well as urban water issues, resource depletion and sustainability, virtual water and water-carbon-ecological footprint. She has conducted research in many different aspects of water, from performing mathematical modeling of aquatic system processes to computational biology relevant to ecosystem function, to the socio-economic aspects of water use and water resource management. She is involved in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) projects that are mainly on innovative multisensors and/or biosensors, smart urban water management, smart cities and ICT for improving ecosystem function and quality. She has recently been appointed as a member of the Steering Committee of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Knowledge Action Network at Future Earth. She has published over 60 articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings and is actively involved either as a Principal Investigator, or as a Coordinator in research projects funded by the European Commission, or national sources.

Jasminko Novak

Jasminko Novak is Professor of Information Systems at the University of Applied Sciences Stralsund and Chairman of the European Institute for Participatory Media in Berlin. He has 20 years of experience in trans-disciplinary research and practice in the area of Digital Innovation and Participatory Systems in multi-stakeholder settings applied to different domains with a special focus on societal challenges, such as sustainable management of water and energy. His group leads the work on visual decision-making support tools for participatory integrated planing and multi-stakeholder dialogues in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in the DAFNE project

Dr Tamara Avellán

Dr Tamara Avellán is an Academic Officer at UNU-FLORES and leads the Water Resource Management Unit. Her research focuses on the overarching understanding of the bio-physical interlinkages between the natural resources, water, soil and waste, and on the interlinkages of these resources with social, economic and institutional spaces. She has worked on modelling of crop distribution due to climate change, the ecological impact of water quality on aquatic life, the effects of excess nutrient loads on plant morphology, constructed wetland design and plant selection for pollution reduction and wastewater use, the sustainability of wastewater treatment systems, as well as climate services. Her career has shown her the world of academic research and its implementation in the service to member states through the United Nations in Latin America and the Caribean, Small Island Developing States and West Africa. Working at this interface, learning and applying inter- and transdisciplinary methods have been crucial. She is a member of various UN-Water Task Forces, has co-authored articles in international peer-reviewed journals, UN Publications and popular press, and is currently a Steering Committee member of the Dresden