Alexandre is a postdoctoral researcher in the TRANSCEND team in Munich, where he will focus on the future of climate vulnerability. He holds a PhD in Geography (2023). He developed his PhD about multidimensional urban vulnerability at the Center for Earth Systems Research and Sustainability (CEN) at Universität Hamburg (UHH) as a member of the Research Group Climate and Security (CLISEC). He is originally from Brazil and received a DAAD Doctoral Fellowship. During the PhD, he co-led the research project “Volunteered Geographic Information on the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global South” (COVIDGI), supported by the Volkswagen Foundation “Corona Crisis and Beyond” grant. Alexandre also holds a master’s degree in Contemporary Urbanism from the Federal University of Pelotas (2015) and a bachelor’s degree in architecture and urban planning from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2008). He received awards for his professional and academic work, led interdisciplinary teams in 19 urban plans, and collaborated in policymaking, including contributions to UNDRR and UNEP.

Swati Shinde is a Research Associate in TRANSCEND and PhD Student at the interdisciplinary programme in Climate Studies (IDPCS) at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB). She is working on Climate Change, Urban Flooding and Transformations in Mumbai under the guidance of Professor D. Parthasarathy and Professor N.C. Narayanan at IITB. Her research is focussed on defining transformative pathways for shifting the existing adaptation and mitigation based response for building resilience towards urban flooding by demonstrating the case of flood prone areas in Borivali-Dahisar located at the north-western suburban area of Mumbai.

Jingyao Zhou is a student assistant in TRANSCEND and currently a Master student in Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He is interested in topics such as flood hazard management and hydrological data analysis and experienced in data processing with R and Python, as well as with geographic information systems (GIS).

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Eléonore Otto is student assistant in TRANSCEND. After having studied English and Spanish for three years, she began to study Geography as a second subject within her educational studies. The decision was inspired by her admittance into the certificate programme “el mundo”, which has enabled Eléonore to gain insights into the field of education for sustainable development for two years now. By studying geography she aims at developing an in-depth understanding for the interwoven processes within our ecosystem and to further investigate the impact of anthropogenic influence on the environment.

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Sindhuja Kasthala is a Research Associate in TRANSCEND and currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the Interdisciplinary programme (IDP) in Climate Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB). She received the Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture Vijayawada (SPAV), India, in 2014 and a Master’s degree in Disaster Mitigation and Management from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR), India in 2016. She worked as a faculty member in the Department of Architecture and Planning at the National Institute of Technology Calicut (NITC), India, for two years until 2018. Her PhD project broadly deals with the assessment of various types of vulnerability to climate change and the coastal policy impacts on vulnerability. She is interested in applying modern data science and statistical techniques such as machine learning in social science. Her recent interests have been in the areas of integrated coastal management, anthropogenic vulnerability, integrated vulnerability assessment, and coastal policy impacts.

Veronika Zwirglmaier is a PhD student in the TRANSCEND project. Her focus lies on the development of an integrated modelling platform to perform integrated large-scale assessments of flood risk in complex urban environments under future scenarios and adaptation options. The platform will be based on different urban morphologies and Bayesian network analysis to allow for generalization in data scarce environments. Veronika obtained her Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Technical University of Munich. Prior to that she did her Bachelor’s in Landscape Architecture and Landscape Planning also at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). At the end of 2020, Veronika joined the TRANSCEND team at the University of Munich.

Mia Wannewitz is is a PhD student in the TRANSCEND project. Mia focuses on collective adaptation to climate change in Jakarta. In her work, she qualitatively examines the link between salient social identities among the most vulnerable in the face of flood risk and collective adaptation actions. Mia is a trained geographer and has a background in research on climate change risks, vulnerability and adaptation in urban contexts in Southeast Asia and Germany. Prior to her PhD position at LMU, she has worked as a research associate at United Nations University in Bonn, Germany.

Deepal Doshi is a PhD student within the TRANSCEND project. Her research focuses on adaptation visions of different stakeholders in the context of flood risk in Mumbai through expert interviews. She is exploring the potential of social listening and using Twitter discourses in understanding questions of the social contract in flood risk management. She is also interested in questions of transitions across risk paradigms and risk governance. Her previous research on adaptation in cities, adaptation finance, adaptation planning and risk indices has featured in journals such as Nature Climate Change and Global Environmental Change, among others.

Dr. Ravinder Dhiman is a Research Associate in TRANSCEND and recent PhD graduate in Urban Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB). Currently, he is an Assistant Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for Geoinformatics, Jamsetji Tata School of Disaster Studies (JTSDS), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. Ravinder’s research interests are science-policy instruments for urban development; Technologies in Disaster Management and Integrated geospatial solutions.

Dr. Jan Petzold is Co-principal Investigator and Project Coordinator in the TRANSCEND project and a postdoctoral researcher at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU). His research focuses on social-ecological systems in coastal zones, social capital, vulnerability, local knowledge, and leverage points for transformative climate change adaptation. Besides a general focus on coasts, Jan has expertise on islands and is Co-Editor of the Island Studies Journal. He has conducted empirical research on Helgoland, the Isles of Scilly, The Bahamas, and Madagascar since 2009. Jan holds a PhD in Earth System Sciences from the University of Hamburg, and before joining the LMU in 2021, he worked as a Science Officer for the Technical Support Unit of Working Group II of the IPCC and as a postdoc in the Synthesis Team of the Cluster of Excellence CLICCS of the University of Hamburg.

Prof. Parthasarathy is Principal Investigator in the TRANSCEND project and professor at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB). His research focuses on the following themes: Urban Studies, Development Studies, Law and Governance, Legal Pluralism, Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change, Gender and Development, Disaster Studies.

Prof. Garschagen is the Research Group Leader of TRANSCEND. He holds the chair in human geography and heads the Teaching and Research Unit for Human Environment Relations at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU). He further is a Honorary Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne, in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. His research focuses on risk, vulnerability, adaptation and transformation in the context of environmental hazards and climate change, particularly in cities. Prof. Garschagen served as a Lead Author in the IPCC’s Special Report on Ocean and the Cryosphere (SROCC), the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and is part of the core writing team of the Synthesis Report (SYR). For a number of years, he has been the scientific lead of the World Risk Report. He an associate editor of the international journals Climate and Development and Urban Climate as well as an editorial board member of the Journal of Extreme Events.