About Bart van Westen

Bart van Westen is a coastal researcher at Deltares and PhD candidate at Delft University of Technology, focusing on the interdisciplinary description of coastal systems and sandy Nature-based Solutions. His work combines expertise in coastal engineering and numerical modelling to develop innovative tools for sustainable coastal management.

After completing his Master's degree at Delft University of Technology in 2018, where he implemented dune development processes in the numerical model AeoLiS in collaboration with Deltares, he joined Deltares as a researcher. During his time there, he has contributed to the further development of AeoLiS, supported physical model testing in the Deltares Deltaflume, and conducted wave impact studies using OpenFOAM.

In spring 2021, he started his PhD research on the integrated development of coastal systems. His research began as part of the Dutch Coastline Challenge (DCC), which seeks to identify and evaluate innovative nourishment solutions for the Dutch coast that are scalable, sustainable, and emission-free. He developed a coupling framework to exchange information between existing process-based models for the marine and aeolian domain, enabling interactions across the dry-wet interface.

As a member of the AeoLiS-team, he continues to contribute to the model's development, primarily focusing on the implementation of landform shaping processes. Currently, he is applying and further developing a Lagrangian particle tracing tool SedTRAILS to map sediment pathways across the nearshore-dune system.