Bas van Vliet is Associate Professor at the Environmental Policy Group of Wageningen University. His field of expertise is the socio-technical change of urban water, energy and waste infrastructures. Worldwide these infrastructures have been prone to liberalization, privatization, decentralization and splintering, and environmental innovation. The focus of his research and education is on how these dynamics are steered by, and how they implicate on, social practices and relations between providers and consumers. He has published edited volumes on Infrastructures of Consumption and on Sanitation in the Western and the developing world, next to 46 scientific papers on drinking water supply, sanitation, waste management, (smart) energy systems, the WEF nexus and housing retrofit.
Bas supervised PhD candidates on Water, Waste and Sanitation (in the Netherlands and in East Africa) Smart Grids in the Netherlands, Housing Retrofitting (Amsterdam and China) and Urban Governance. Currently he is involved in research projects on Housing Retrofit, Smart Energy Systems, Circular Water and Agriculture Systems and Social and Spatial Justice in Regional Energy Strategies.
Besides, Bas is coordinating master’s courses Sustainable Technology Development, Governance for Sustainable Cities, and Metropolitan Challenges for the MSc MADE. During the courses, the students focus on understanding the challenges affecting metropolitan regions worldwide in depth and from different disciplinary perspectives. Amsterdam is used as a real-life example and the students engage in self-organized activities involving experts, policymakers, agencies and collectives in the city. For second year Made students, Bas is thesis supervisor, Living Lab group coach, and lecturer in the Professional Profile Course for the domain of policy.
“The biggest challenge for the city of Amsterdam is to develop inclusive strategies to reorganize and retrofit its socio-technical urban systems to cope with Climate Change.”
Bas van Vliet
Associate Professor Environmental Policy & AMS PI
