Nature Based Solutions Challenge

Thaísa is an architect, urban designer and urban planner, with specialization in solar and wind energy. At the Sustainable Energy Department of Witteveen+Bos, Thaísa has worked in the last 5 years with solar parks, onshore and offshore wind parks and high-voltage infrastructure in projects involving project development and landscape integration, where nature is a starting point. For varied solar parks and high-voltage stations, Thaísa has designed the landscape integration plan where Nature-Inclusive Design (NID) is the key element. She has interest in further exploring NBS at wind parks, seen that this is yet of much requested for wind energy projects due to the large scale on the vertical infrastructure onto the landscape.

However, it also means that the landscape effects are higher and that nature can here play an important role in the transition between infrastructure and landscape, contributing to nature enhancement and public acceptance towards wind energy. In this topic, Thaísa is supervising a WUR-student who is developing a catalogue of NID-options for onshore wind, solar parks and high voltage infrastructure. A decision making tool for the project developer is also being developed in this study for providing insight on costs, technical & ecological risks and benefits. Thaísa has previously also supervised a group of WUR-students in an ACT-program (Academic Consultancy Training). They have researched the effect of solar panels on soil and crop quality with focus on agrivoltaics (combining solar energy with organic farming).

Thaísa also has interest in the incorporation of nature in the urban environment seen the problem of lack of space and need for multifunctional areas. Thaísa has supervised a WUR-student in a research on options for biodiversity enhancement in cities, which resulted in an inventory of options and in a multi-criteria analysis for the selection of options.

Internally, Thaísa contributed in the creation of the Witteveen+Bos NBS-index, an inventory of several NBS-solutions to be used in projects varying from infrastructure, energy, built and offshore environment. Thaísa also takes part in the Biodiversity Group of the sector Built Environment of Witteveen+Bos, a group focused on sharing knowledge and experience on biodiversity-enhancement in projects. Thaísa has a green-yellow profile, which means she appreciates working in team, brainstorming and creative processes. In this aspect, she likes supervising students in providing solutions for research questions related to sustainable energy, biodiversity and climate adaptation. With this spirit, Thaísa supervised the winning group of the first Urban Greenhouse Challenge at the WUR, having a great experience by guiding and learning with the students.

Dennis is an expert in facilitating integral decision making for both governments and private parties. For supporting integral decision making in projects at the Explorations and Plan Elaboration Department of Witteveen+Bos. Dennis has worked in the last 3 years on Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs), Environmental and Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA) and Value Management (VM). Value management is a value and function-oriented thinking process of how well an organization, project, or product satisfies the needs of stakeholders, considering the impacts, uncertainties and resources required to fulfil these needs. Through an area-based approach, Dennis identifies the needs of different stakeholders, facilitates a process to create design alternatives jointly and evaluates these through a multi-criteria analysis. Dennis has been involved as an expert Value manager in several Value Management studies, including, Re-development of urban areas in the Hague, port and bridge construction projects, waste and drinking water projects and nature restoration projects.

Dennis graduated as an environmental economist at Wageningen University & Research. Dennis was responsible for the Environmental and Social Cost-Benefit analysis in 2019 to expand the critical waterways in Friesland, The Netherlands. In 2021 he was project leader for an environmental economic feasibility study in Langedijk, the Netherlands, for creating new and expanding old waterways. Recently, he was involved in the Environmental and Social due diligence to expand Sokhna Port in Egypt. Currently, he is working on an environmental and Social Impact Assessment for the expansion of a motorway near the city of Rotterdam. Dennis is very passionate about implementing sustainable, nature enhancing and circular solutions in his work. He is a team player, analytical and a strong communicator. He is fluent in Dutch English and understands German and Spanish.

Within Witteveen+Bos Dennis is leading a NBS workgroup that works with NBS in projects and facilitates the uptake of NBS within the company. Dennis was responsible for the NBS-index, an inventory of several NBS-solutions to be used in projects varying from infrastructure, energy, built and offshore environment. As well as the NBS-factsheets and NBS-QuickScan designed to identify possibilities for NBS in an early stage of the project. Dennis is an ambassador of one of seven Sustainable Design Principles of Witteveen+Bos, called ‘Multifunctional design’. The ‘Multifunctional design' principle encourages searching for multiple functions and a maximum combination of functions which can best be fulfilled with the design. The crux of the matter is to surprise stakeholders with an extra function, and therefore extra added societal value achieved by a relatively small design modification.

Cas Dinjens is a marine ecologist at Arcadis where he works, among others, on projects that deal with biodiversity and Nature-based solutions. Before his job at Arcadis, he studied aquaculture and marine resource management and forest and nature conservation at the Wageningen University. During his studies his focus was on the ecology marine and terrestrial environment, but he also started to explore a field like Building with Nature. For his theses he went to Kenya to study the effects of coral restoration and he went to Ecuador to study the effects of climate change on lakes.

Tabea recently graduated from her MSc Program Environmental Sciences at Wageningen University and has worked as a consultant in Urban Water and Climate Adaptation at Arcadis ever since. She is specialized in the concept of circular economy as well as nature-based solutions and joined the challenge as a mentor. Tabea was born and raised in the city Wuppertal in Germany, where she has experienced issues such as heat stress, droughts and flooding firsthand. These experiences had a lasting impact on her and gave her the motivation to re-think and re-design city-concepts and neighborhoods. Some of her recent projects for Arcadis were focused on flood prevention measures in Rotterdam, blue-green measures against salination for a municipality in Zeeland and writing a whitepaper on nature-based solutions.

Marcel van Dorst (1967) studied physical geography at the University of Utrecht and tropical civil engineering in Arnhem in The Netherlands. The first seven years of his career Marcel worked for a Dutch consulting company in South America (Brazil, Venezuela, Chili and Bolivia) as soil (land use qualification, geomorphology), water catchment management and spatial planning advisor in the Amazon and Andes region. Back in the Netherlands Marcel worked as consultant at different projects in water safety, water quality, climate adaptation and biodiversity. He is familiar with the use of GIS and database software in his work. He works already seven years for BWZ Engineers.

BWZ Engineers is focused on the creation of functional, healthy and safe environments. This includes the design and development of both rural and urban areas. Important aspects in our approach are the relationships between people and their environment, water management, nature and ecology, living, working and recreation. Communication and project management are important components of our approach. We take an active role in new developments and innovative projects.

In his free time, Marcel cultivates different trees (e.g., walnuts, chestnuts, pecan, pawpaw) for the establishment of food forests or agroforestry. In general, Marcel is interested in sustainability and particularly in flora and plants.He speaks Dutch, English, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

Water can be followed as a trail in and next to Jitse’s studies. He spends his hours as physical geographer on water management issues for nature through science and consultancy. He is also engaged in making students enthusiastic about the role of water in ecosystems and the superpowers of data. His fascination lies on the interface of abiotics and biotics, as it is crucial to understand the relation between these two to understand how nature is challenged at present.

After graduating in 1983 from the former Environmental Hygiene degree programme, Jan Karel Mak worked as an environmental consultant for DHV engineering. Seven years later, he moved to McKinsey & Company, where he was employed as a management consultant. In 1995, he joined the board of Heidemij Advies bv (now Arcadis), an engineering consultancy that specialises in urban development, traffic, environmental and spatial solutions, geo-information, land issues, and road infrastructure. In 1999, he came into contact with Deerns Raadgevende Ingenieurs bv, where he has been a partner and CEO since 2000. Deerns is a consultancy group that specialises in building physics and installation and energy technology with a view to developing technological facilities in the built environment. It currently has a 600-strong workforce spread across the Netherlands, Dubai, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the USA.

Esther Wintraecken is working as a learning professional and business developer sustainable agriculture at Wageningen Plant Research in Team International. Prior to this position she worked as a country manager of an agricultural consultancy firm in Myanmar focusing on value chain development in various crops and livestock. As a curious and positive minded promotor of learning and development, she gets excited and committed about facilitating growth and development among people, organisations and the wider society.