SENSE highlights

The farm sector is affected by a large and changing set of risk sources including more volatile producer prices, unusual weather patterns, upstream and downstream market power along the value chain, increasing dependence on financial institutions, and political risks. This induces the need for (new) risk management tools. Also the Common Agricultural Policy 2020 is considering risk management as an important component of agricultural policy.

Participants will learn theories concerning risk analysis and risk coping strategies and will develop proficiency with software to facilitate the initiation of their own research in topics related to risk in agriculture. The course deals with both conceptual and methodological issues.

To learn more about the course and for registration see here

Programming can serve multiple purposes. Purposes like developing applications and working with data are also very useful for research. For dealing with these issues, Python offers many libraries. Getting the skills of working with some of these libraries will enable future learning.

For more information and registration see here.

The challenge for biochemical engineers is to design compact and clean processes to efficiently separate instable products, such as recombinant proteins, from dilute complex fermentation broths to the required pharmaceutical degree of purity. Therefore, the quantitative systematic design of integrated downstream processes is the general theme of this Advanced Course. The aim of the course is to provide the tools for the participants to be able to quantitatively and systematically design an integrated downstream process.

For more information and registration see here.

This summer school aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the connection between gender and society. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to explore various trends and theoretical perspectives, applied to significant societal challenges. Specifically, we will address economic and sociological issues, such as the wage gap between genders and the underrepresentation of women in various domains. Our focus will be on analyzing the root causes of these issues and examining potential government interventions. 

For more information and registration see here.

We discuss specifying priors, obtaining the posterior, prior/posterior predictive checking, sensitivity analyses, and the usefulness of a specific class of priors called shrinkage priors. We propose strategies for reproducibility and reporting standards, outlining the WAMBS-checklist (when to Worry and how to Avoid the Misuse of Bayesian Statistics). We have prepared many exercises to enable students to get hands-on experience.

For more information and registration see here

This course is about one of the greatest challenges of our time: climate change. What are the latest insights of the science of economics into its causes and potential solutions? How large are the costs of climate change? Should we tax carbon, cap-and-trade emission rights, or subsidize solar and wind power? Why is it so difficult to stick to environmental agreements such as ‘Paris’, despite the evident benefits to all? How can we prevent our industry from moving abroad if we take a leading role and ‘go it alone’ in taking environmental action? What is the role of economic growth and development? Should we stop it to avert a climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss, or can we pin our hopes on green growth?

For more information and registration see here.

The Soil Biology Group of Wageningen University is organising a laboratory skills course to define which measurements of soil biology are relevant for which soil functions. This course will provide the participants with an overview of a range of methods related to the five soil functions and will provide detailed practical training in a subset of measures. The training will be a combination of lectures, laboratory and field sessions (interactive lectures and practical sessions each day).

For more information and registration see here. 

This course explores state-of-the-art principles, methods, and techniques related to data science and artificial intelligence applications in relation to the Environmental Sciences’ major topics.

For more information and registration see here 

In this one-week course, we go onsite on a dairy farm where many recommended carbon sequestration practices are implemented. We talk to soil and social scientists, legislators, carbon certifiers. Using a transdisciplinary and immersive approach, we seek to see, to witness, experience, and truly understand: What is carbon farming?

For more information and registration see here.

This course focuses on theoretical concepts, such as autocatalytic loops and positive and negative feedbacks between organisms in ecological networks as well as the importance of non-trophic interactions by ecosystem engineers. The course will address how these principles can be used to link communities to ecosystems enabling a better understanding of how environmental changes affect community and ecosystem dynamics. Students will construct ecological networks of their own study system or based on literature data and analyse these using structural equation modelling.

For more information and registration see here.

There is growing evidence that traditional interventions for the reduction of hydro-meteorological risks (e.g., floods, droughts, heatwaves, storms, coastal storm surges, tropical cyclones, landslides, wildfires) have focused on grey infrastructure measures which are often limited in their approach and effects. A new response towards disaster risk reduction, water security, and resilience to climate change, which has a potential to be more effective and sustainable than traditional measures, is currently passing under the name of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS).

This conference aims to bring together academic communities and practitioners to exchange information, experiences and research results on a variety of aspects concerning Nature-Based Solutions for Water Security and Climate Adaptation.

Please find the full programme here.

Transformation of society and sustainability governance requires significant reordering: one that changes existing drivers and structures to drive change towards fundamentally novel systems. During the conference we focus on thecentral question, can sustainability transformation be governed? And if so by
whom, what and how?

For more information, see here.

• Hongyu Mu
  Field and residential exposure of pesticides: Integrated risk analysis on terrestrial ecosystem and rural residents
  5 June 2024, Wageningen University
  
• Sem Duijndam
  Floods of movement - Drivers of human migration under sea-level rise and flood risk
  5 June 2024, VU Amsterdam
  
• Shutong He
  Energy conservation at home - Understanding heterogenous effects of information-based behavioural interventions with experimental evidence 
  6 June 2024, VU Amsterdam
  
• Vera de Ruijter 
  Improving the realism and relevance of microplastic effect tests 
  7 June 2024, Wageningen University

• Shruti Setty
  Tipping points and causality in the past earth system 
  10 June 2024, Wageningen University

• Ke Meng
  Multi-modelling of the managed aquifer recharge systems for sustainable groundwater development in Beijing Plain, China
  10 June, 2024, Wageningen University
• Kees Nederhoff
  Navigating the storm - New approaches to tropical cyclone risk analyses and their implications for coastal flooding predictions 
  20 June, 2024, IHE Delft, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education