Elvia Rufo is a researcher and PhD candidate at the department of Environmental Economics of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). She has a background in environmental economics and her research work focuses on environmental socio-economic and monetary analysis, based on ecosystem services provision. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Economics at the University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain) and her MSc in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). During her academic career, she has been involved in environmental economic valuation research projects, using spatial analysis tools and econometric-based software methods. Her master’s thesis investigated the socio-economic values deriving from natural capital based on its ecosystem services provision in Denmark. She has also recently contributed to the work of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for the Values Assessment chapter.
Currently, Elvia is involved as an Early Stage Researcher in the PRORISK project, focusing on evaluating the socio-economic impacts of chemical substances on ecosystem services provision and natural capital. Her study aims to further develop socio-economic evaluation methods for environmental risk assessment, quantifying the economic damages of chemicals to different stakeholders across time and space (PRORISK project website: https://www.recetox.muni.cz/prorisk).
Expertise
Ecosystem services; economic valuation; cost-benefit analysis; geographic information systems.
