BIOGRAPHY
Hessel is trained as a hydrologist. He has about 20 years of experience with flood and drought risk modelling and understanding, and flood and drought monitoring and forecasting. His approach to development of technology and projects is strongly anchored in co-design. Over the past 5 years, his focus has been on research and development of locally sustainable technology for monitoring methods related to natural hazard risks.
He creates a bridge between local users and entrepreneurs with skills to operationally collect data sets, and local and international audiences that require such data sets, such as National Hydrometeorological Service Providers, water-related consultancies, International Financing Institutes and Earth Observation centres. Within Rainbow Sensing, as a self-trained developer, he conceived and developed the idea for OpenRiverCam, the first entirely free and open-source suite for operational management of river monitoring sites using camera observations.
Within Delft University and IHE Delft, he supervises students that work on affordable or repurposed technology for environmental monitoring. He works for and/or collaborates with internationally recognized entities such as Deltares, Rijkswaterstaat, the World Bank, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and GroundTruth SA.