Sebastiaan

Van Herk

Sebastiaan

Validated Lead Expert

Generic Skills

B.1. Understanding of integrated and sustainable urban development:

I have 17 years experience in sustainable urban development: climate adaptation, urban planning, liveability, smart cities, circularity, open innovation. I have developed and coordinated 24 transnational EU projects (ia Interreg, H2020), working with more than 50 cities, and other governments, business and knowledge institutions. I have been in-house consultant or researcher for 14 cities in 5 EU countries, deepening my understanding of the workings, needs and opportunities of cities in integrated and sustainable urban development. All my projects focus on actual impact on the ground. There, all sustainability aspects come together, and require overcoming governance and financial barriers. I have mobilised >€100M in innovation funding for pilots, that have guided uptake and mobilised a multiple in public and private investments in urban and infrastructure projects, incl. nature based solutions, city greening, water and transport and mobility concepts. I hold a PhD in governance in climate adaptation and urban planning from TU Delft and UNESCO-IHE, and MSc on public-private partnerships in infrastructure. I have published over 50 scientific and professional publications and I contribute to various educational and capacity building programmes. I have been appointed advocate for UN-ISDR and an expert for UN Environment. I have developed city-to-city learning programs for the UN and EU on topics of climate change adaptation and resilience, smart cities and open innovation.

B.2. Understanding of exchange and learning processes at transnational level:

In the international projects my role as coordinator is mostly to facilitate effective exchange and learning, where I focus on actual future implementation. Using these experiences, I have successfully developed, published and implemented multiple transnational exchange and learning approaches: 1. city-to-city learning (C2CL) (https://www.un-ihe.org/city-2-city-learning), 2. learning & action alliance (Van Herk et al, 2012), and 3. city accelerator programmes. In the BEGIN project (10 mid-sized cities from 7 EU countries) I have facilitated transnational C2CL to develop and review urban investment schemes and policies for blue green infrastructure, using social innovation approaches. The peer-learning approaches have been so successful that UN-ISDR asked me as their City Resilience advocate to adopt and combine these with their multiple tools. My Learning & Action Alliance approach is published and used broadly to support sustainable urban development pilots and policies through collaborations between several government agencies, research, business and civil society. After successful deployment between 7 EU cities (MARE), I have implemented it for the Asian Development Bank (MARE-Asia) in Indonesia and Vietnam to develop investment proposals for mainstreaming climate adaptation in urban development and infrastructure. Since 2008, I have delivered capacity building programmes for international teams at IHE-Delft and was ranked highest on trainers’ evaluation (4.5/5).

B.3. Proficiency in English:

I am an effective communicator in English both written and spoken. Excellent writing skills are proven from the over 50 scientific and professional publications, 24 successful project proposals as lead author approved by EU and international funding programmes and multiple popular publications and blogs (see my Google scholar or Academia profile). Both my M.Sc and PhD degrees were delivered in English. I facilitate and present at international conferences (approximately 4-6 per year since 2006), round tables, focus groups and project meetings. I have 17 years of working experience in English, coordinating international collaborative projects, managing an international company with 35 people international staff from >10 countries and offices in ES, NL, UK.

Expertise for the design and delivery of transnational exchange and learning activities:

Summary Expertise for the design and delivery of transnational exchange and learning activities:

I aim is to create value from effective collaborations with a strategic focus on delivery and impact, combined with the daily unburdening of partners so they can focus on content and joint interests. My practical approaches include to discuss and monitor all partner diverse interests, mapping needs and strengths to organise match-making, twinning and learning programmes. I aim to keep partners motivated as they can work on topics and projects that drive them and their politicians and executives. I focus on collaboration between the ‘willing’ tapping into their joint interests and help the ‘difficult’ to accommodate their interests in the project. I am multilingual with working and living experience in multiple countries which also helps connecting to partner interests. I am an experienced facilitator preparing interactive meetings complemented by webinars, telcos, etc. I have done this successfully with Thematic Groups with >40 partners from 20 countries for the GCA (www.gca.org). I create and manage open online project communities to share project outcomes, create theme-focused conversations for exchanging content, methodologies, tips to allow partners and visitors to benefit from the knowledge generated (eg https://score.community/). I document meeting learnings concisely and quickly (in a day) focusing on follow up actions. Project results are ‘de-projectised’ for broader uptake and published online/offline often enriched with interviews of key stakeholders.

Thematic expertise:

Theme / Policy:

Urban Strategic Planning

Summary Thematic expertise:

I see urban strategic planning as key vehicle to deliver upon policy objectives from various domains (environmental, mobility, energy, etc), and it allows for the active engagement of multiple stakeholders & citizens. Urban strategic planning has been at the centre of my international projects, research and consultancy work. My PhD focused on the governance of the urban planning process to deliver climate adaptation and integrated flood risk management. I am a member of the UN working group on urban planning. I currently coordinate 4 running EU projects where urban planning is pivotal. 1. delivering blue-green infrastructure and uses social innovation to engage companies and citizens to develop business cases and public private partnerships for investments and maintenance. 2. liveability of cities incorporating health and well-being into urban design, as well as implementing social and health programmes that make use of urban green spaces. 3. Aims to improve public service delivery in the physical domain environment, energy and mobility by developing data-driven solutions. For these and other projects I have delivered concise policy briefs and facilitated policy learning groups for politicians and senior decision makers in cities. And practice briefs for urban planning professionals as well as thematic experts in cities eg water, climate, transport, smart city, asset management. These mainly focus on long term urban planning, investment planning and implementation programmes.

Theme / Policy:

Local Governance

Summary Thematic expertise:

Understanding local governance is critical to deliver impact in cities. During my professional career I have consulted and/or trained >50 municipal governments in NL, BE, ES, UK, DE, FR, SE, NO. I have developed the Learning & Action Alliance approach to stimulate collaboration between local government departments and agencies. Often their strategic aims, financial budgets and operational plans are not (yet) aligned or coordinated, particularly for new and integrated topics (climate mitigation and adaptation, smart cities, sustainable mobility). My PhD focused on how to effectively organise governance between domains, disciplines and organisations. I have organised city-to-city learning and twinning programmes for >20 cities for the EU and UN that are sensitive to local governance contexts whilst breaking silos. I have particularly focused on mobilising (financial) resources for integrated pilot projects supported by multi-agency groups. My recent work on ‘social innovation’ includes various interactive approaches to engage citizens, NGO, as well as various governance agencies to develop joint business cases: public-private-people partnerships. Currently we are developing practice briefs for cities on how to deploy effective social innovation approaches.

Theme / Policy:

Research, Innovation and Knowledge Economy

Theme / Policy:

Environmental Issues

Summary Thematic expertise:

My environmentally related work experience comprises: water management, air quality, climate, circularity, and transversal issues such as procurement, asset management and data/smart. In our firm, I am the director of 2 departments: Environment and Smart City and data with approximately 15 people staff. I have been selected as expert for UN Environment in sustainable and circular procurement and appointed as Resilient City advocate for UN-ISDR. The environmental EU projects I currently coordinate include: 1. air quality sensing, with related technology and policy development together with national environmental agencies and cities. 2. Nature based solutions and blue-green infrastructure with benefits for flood management, air quality, biodiversity, etc. 3. Circular procurement for building, infrastructure, furniture and ICT with cities joining in communities of practice, business modeling and policy making. 4. Flood risk management and climate adaptation, 5. Two smart city projects with environment as used cases, including waste collection, water management and air quality. Within these, I have co-developed guidance documents for professionals in NBS and circular procurement, and for business casing in general.

Theme / Policy:

Entrepreneurship and competitive SMEs

Expertise support to local authorities and other stakeholders in designing & delivering integrated and participatory policies

E.1. Knowledge on participatory methods and tools for co-production and implementation of local polices :

For the city of Dordrecht (NL) I contributed to the local water and climate plan/policy through the participatory approach ‘local-regional learning and action alliance’. Using funding from the MARE and CAMINO projects (for which I was external coordinator) we created the Learning and Action Alliance to facilitate participatory planning between local and regional government agencies. We split in 2 policy processes, ‘water in the city’ for urban water management and pluvial flooding, and ‘city in water’ for flood safey from coastal and fluvial flooding. The outcomes were adopted in local policy. And were used as an example for national policy in the Dutch Delta Programme, where Dordrecht became a pilot. There were some difficulties in establishing roles and responsibilities between the city, regional water authorities and regional and national government. These were explored and addressed in the ‘untreatening’ platform of the LAA.

E.2. Knowledge on integrated approach for the design, delivering, monitoring and evaluation of urban strategies/policies:

BEGIN 2016-2019: I worked on design, delivery, monitoring, evaluation of blue green infrastructure as integrated sustainable urban strategy for 10 cities: from inter-departmental investment planning to delivery and monitoring of scalable BGI pilot projects. Monitoring tool: I designed and applied the BGI progress matrix. I defined and validated the criteria to monitor: city development in ia: participatory planning, business casing, performance monitoring of BGI. During 3 years I organized a 5-step monitoring process and data was systematically gathered (6-monthly self assessment) and reported under my supervision and guidance. I presented and compared the results between cities in spider diagrams (10 essentials as spokes; performance charted along the spokes). I measured KPIs on activities, outputs and impact for feedback on program effectiveness and efficient use of resources. UNISDR 2013-2019: I helped 5 cities to enhance their city resilience through integrated design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation. To monitor progress on resilience strategies, I used the 10 essentials toolkit for city resilience (www.unisdr.org). For 6 years, I trained the cities on the toolkit, and I organized self-assessments of progress on the esssentials. I reviewed the assessments, discussed them with other UN Advocates, and used it for training. The monitoring tool and my support in delivery was on ia: understanding of risk scenarios, resilient urban design, disaster response

E.3. Awareness of the main policy and funding schemes for sustainable urban development at EU and national level:

I have awareness of EU funding schemes through my 24 EU projects in various programmes: H2020, Interreg, LIFE+, Eureka, COST, and national funding schemes in NL, ES, BE, UK, using our 3 offices in various countries. Policy-wise these projects are linked to EU and national policy, and typically comprise policy learning groups that advise policy makers. Eg in my EU MARE the pilot project, became a national pilot for the Dutch delta programme policy development, and subsequently an example for the EU floods directive. An example of national funding is that I won the the tender from Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Dutch Government for the Global Centre on Adaptation.

E.4. Ability to understand specific local situations and adapt tools and content to different local realities:

For UNISDR 2013-2019: I have facilitated the cities Dordrecht and Delft (NL) and Barcelona (ES) to use the 10 essentials toolkit (www.unisdr.org) for resilience during 4 years. The tool had been applied to many member cities, and I had to adapt the tool and approach to each local situation, whilst maintaining consistency. The added value of using the tool consistently, were: 1. the local dialogue it facilitated, discussing the specific local context, needs and opportunities (for new policies), 2. The ability to assess, compare and learn across participant cities. With the 10 essentials, I helped implement and monitor their city resilience strategies: risk scenarios, urban design, disaster response. In sessions I started explaining the tool, applied to the city: what does every essential mean for Dordrecht, Delft, Barcelona. I gave examples from other cities and I studied the local context and brainstormed examples upfront for them. I facilitated a session between the planning and water departments in NL, and with utilities in ES. I monitored progress in 6 monthly self-assessment sessions. I needed to adapt to local situations as in Delft the main risk is pluvial flood risk, where disaster response needs to be much different from Dordrecht with riverine flood risk. In Delft there is no risk of loss of life, but rather of damages and disruption of services. In Barcelona we looked at drought. This led to other discussions between government agencies and citizens.

Summary Expertise:

Recently I have supported cities in the design and delivery of integrated policies in 2 ways. 1. By advocating more challenge-based work (eg green city, circular city, etc) where traditionally silo-ed policy domains have to be integrated. 2. By working on mainstreaming, ie coordinating investment planning from various departments, agencies and domains. I have designed and delivered participatory policies using (i) Social innovation to engage citizens, private sector and NGOs, particularly with a service-design approach (starting from what services they want?), (ii) a Learning and Action Alliance to facilitate participatory planning between local and regional government agencies. For UNISDR I have helped cities to use their ’10 essentials’ for resilience with local stakeholders. In Dordrecht (NL) I have built upon their water ambassador network that continuously mobilises and nurtures active citizens. I have awareness of EU funding schemes through my 24 EU projects in various programmes: H2020, Interreg, LIFE+, Eureka, COST, and national funding schemes in NL, ES, BE, UK, using our 3 offices in various countries. Policy-wise these projects are linked to EU and national policy, and typically comprise policy learning groups that advise policy makers. Eg in my EU MARE the pilot project, became a national pilot for the Dutch delta programme policy development, and subsequently an example for the EU floods directive.