Victor Beumer
Senior Research Lead Consultant
Biography
Dr Victor Beumer – Senior Research Lead (contractor) for Sustainable Cities (Naturehood and Climate-proof Cities) in the Science, Policy and Innovation team of Earthwatch Europe.
Victor received a MSc degree in Vegetation & Landscape Ecology from University Utrecht (NL); and a PhD in Landscape Ecology from that same university where he investigated the effects of winter flooding on vegetation development in groundwater dependent areas. This was carried out in the light of a Dutch water safety policy and strategy: To retain, to store and to run-off (2001).
Subsequently Victor has been working for 10 years as a wetland expert at a large knowledge institute in the Netherlands where his focus gradually moved towards the concept of ecosystem services and urban surroundings. He has built up a broad experience in working together with engineers and urban planners. He has led several knowledge programmes on green infrastructure and nature-based engineering. He has initiated and chaired the working group of Green Infrastructure in the Water Europe platform, and since 2019 he is seated in their Vison Leadership team on Hybrid Grey and Green Infrastructures. In 2018 Victor started his own company to fully focus on the implementation of climate adaptation measures in cities: urban Nature-based Solutions.
Since March 2019 he is the senior research lead for the Naturehood and Climate-proof Cities programmes. For the latter he has successfully introduced the concept of Tiny Forest in the UK, a fast-growing, native, urban forest where people can get into contact with nature and unravel the supply of benefits from this forest. We have developed a citizen science monitoring programme that focuses on the supply of CO2-uptake, thermal comfort, biodiversity and flood mitigation.