About Martin Verlaan

Prof. Dr. Martin Verlaan is senior researcher Oceanography/Mathematics at Deltares. For several years he has been responsible for the coordination of research and development in the field of data-assimilation and for the scientific coordination and quality control of projects related to storm surge forecasting, marine operational forecasting, Kalman filtering, automated calibration, design of monitoring networks, operational databases and tidal prediction.

He has been actively involved in the development of OpenDA, a generic software package for data-assimilation. OpenDA, previously known as (COSTA and DA-Tools), contains plugins for many models, including the Delft3D Flexible Mesh Suite (Delft3D FM), SWAN, EUROS/LOTOS and many more. OpenDA is being developed in close cooperation with Delft University of Technology, TNO, RIVM and several companies.

Mr. Verlaan has a position as professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the Delft University of Technology. He is also one of the team leaders for the Dutch storm surge warning service (SVSD), which is the responsible authority in The Netherlands for issuing warnings in the event of a severe storm. In addition, he is actively involved with NOOS, a body that tries to stimulate exchange of knowledge, monitoring data and forecast products between the authorities for marine operational forecasting around the North Sea. Some of the NOOS successes are the real-time exchange of monitoring data and the creation of a common bathymetry for the North Sea.