Lena Reimann

Personal information
Dr Lena Reimann is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Water and Climate Risk of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She has conducted her PhD research at the Coastal Risks and Sea-Level Rise research group of the Department of Geography at Kiel University, Germany. Her PhD research focused on developing spatial data and modelling approaches to characterize exposure and vulnerability in coastal locations potentially exposed to the impacts of sea-level rise. She has concentrated on two variables, population and cultural assets (i.e. UNESCO World Heritage) to allow for a more comprehensive assessment of exposure. In her work, Lena explores the uncertainty in future coastal risks with the help of sea-level rise scenarios and socioeconomic scenarios (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, SSPs).

In recent years, Lena has worked on gravity-based migration modelling at continental to global scales. In close collaboration with the City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR), she has developed a modelling approach (called CONCLUDE) that allows for producing spatial population projections that account for rural-urban and inland-coastal migration as well as for urban sprawl. This work was initiated during a six-month research visit at CIDR, funded by a Fulbright doctoral scholarship. Lena is currently working on an extended version of CONCLUDE that allows for exploring the feedbacks of future sea-level rise and different coastal adaptation policies on migration.

Furthermore, Lena has experience in stakeholder-led approaches that she has gained through her involvement in the EVOKED project (‘Enhancing the value of climate data – translating risk and uncertainty utilizing a Living Labs approach’; 2017-2020), in which she has developed local SSPs to support adaptation planning in Flensburg, a city in northern Germany. She has also been a lead author to the First Mediterranean Assessment Report (MAR1) and is a contributing author to IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report (AR6).

Lena is conducting her postdoctoral research as part of the COASTMOVE project, which pursues the aim to assess migration due to sea-level rise with the help of an agent-based modelling approach. She focusses on developing spatial SSP-based projections of demographic variables such as age, sex, and income to characterize vulnerability to the impacts of sea-level rise, which will also provide the baseline conditions for the agent-based approach.

Expertise
Spatial population projections, Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), gravity-based migration modelling, continental-scale coastal risk assessments, sea level rise, UNESCO World Heritage, scenario analysis, scenario development, risk indices, GIS, R.

Education
2021: PhD in Geography, Kiel University, Germany.

2015: Master of Education in English and Geography, Kiel University, Germany.

2011: Bachelor of Arts in English and Geography, Kiel University, Germany.