Alessia Matanó is a PhD candidate within the Water & Climate Risk group at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM). She has a background in hydrology and water resources management from the Technical University of Delft (MSc) and in environmental engineering from the University of Naples Federico II (MSc). In the last three years, Alessia worked for international research centres where she focused on the development of decision support tools for water management within humanitarian crisis and on flood forecasting, early warning system and disaster risk management in Sub Saharan African Countries.
Her research interest lies in the intersection between geoscience and society. To date, Alessia is involved in projects related to drought-flood compound risks in Eastern and Southern Africa. In these projects, she is studying how compound crises evolve in fragile contexts and the interactions and feedbacks between hydrological extremes and human behaviours, focusing mainly on migration, food security and conflict.
Before joining VU, Alessia worked as junior researcher/consultant at CIMA Research Foundation, where she was part of a multidisciplinary team working on flood hazard mapping and flood and drought early warning systems in Western Africa, mainly under UNDRR, UNEP and WMO projects.
Expertise
Climate extremes, geospatial data programming, multi-criteria decision analysis.
