Maarten Krol is an associate professor in integrated water modelling, with Ius Promovendi, and Programme Director of the BSc programme Civil Engineering and the MSc programmes Civil Engineering and Management and Construction Management and Engineering.
He holds a MSc and PhD in mathematical physics from Utrecht University, and has worked as a researcher at the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM, Bilthoven, Netherlands), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, Potsdam, Germany) and the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC, Fortaleza, Brazil). He joined the University of Twente in 2003 and since contributed to research and education of Civil Engineering and Management.
Water management is about matching natural physical processes and societal aspiration that go along with claims on water systems. From his background in integrated assessment modelling and mathematical physics, Krol is interested in using simulation approaches and scenario analysis to gain insights in this match. At RIVM, he was a core contributer to the IMAGE model on global and climate change; at PIK and UFC, he was principal investigator in a large bilateral German-Brazilian programme on drought in Northeastern Brazil in the context of climate change, giving to policy advice to the State Government of Ceará on drought management. At UT he was principal investigator in, among others, European projects on water savings in irrigation and on the water-land-energy-food nexus in EU policies, and currently on drought resilience in German-Dutch transboundary regions in the context of climate change.
Expertise
Earth and Planetary Sciences
- Water
- Water Footprint
- Model
- Investigation
- River Basin
- Land
- Water Availability
- Assessment
Organisations
Main research interests lie in
- understanding the mutual relations between water availability and water use,
- assessing the role of interventions on this relation, specifically the role of reservoirs and their management and spatial allocation and characteristics of irrigation,
- climate change impacts,
- model-technical aspects of uncertainty assessment and the role of uncertainty in policy analysis
Publications
2025
2024
Other contributions
Key publications
Chukalla, A.D., M.S. Krol, and A.Y. Hoekstra (2015). Green and blue water footprint reduction in irrigated agriculture: effect of irrigation techniques, irrigation strategies and mulching. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 19, p.4877-4891.
Krol, M.S., M.J. de Vries, P.R. van Oel, and J.C. de Araújo (2011). Sustainability of small reservoirs and large scale water availability under current conditions and climate change. Water Resources Management 25, p. 3017-3026.
Warmink, J.J., J.A.E.B. Janssen, M.J. Booij, and M.S. Krol (2010). Identification and classification of uncertainties in the application of environmental models. Environmental Modelling & Software25, p. 1518-1527.
Oel, P.R. van, M.S. Krol, and A.Y. Hoekstra (2009). A river basin as a common-pool resource: a case study for the Jaguaribe basin in the semi-arid Northeast of Brazil. Journal of River Basin Management 7(4), p. 345-353.
Oel, P.R. van, Krol, M.S., Hoekstra, A.Y., and Araújo, J.C. de (2008). The impact of upstream water abstractions on reservoir yield: the case of the Orós Reservoir in Brazil. Hydrological sciences journal 53(4), p. 857-867.
Krol, M.S. and A. Bronstert (2007). Regional integrated modelling of climate change impacts on natural resources and resource usage in semi-arid Northeast Brazil. Environmental Modelling & Software 22, p. 259-268.
Krol, M.S, A. Jaeger, A. Bronstert and A. Güntner (2006). Integrated modelling of climate, water, soil, agricultural and socio-economic processes: a general introduction of the methodology and some exemplary results from the semi-arid Northeast of Brazil. Journal of Hydrology 328, p.417-431.
Krol, M.S., J. Alcamo, and R. Leemans (1997). Global and regional impacts of stabilizing atmospheric CO2, Mitigation and Adaption Strategies for Global Change 1, p. 341–361.
Books
Unruh, J., M.S. Krol and N. Kliot (Eds.). (2004). Environmental Change and its implications for population migration. Advances in Global Change Research vol 20. Springer. ISBN: 1-4020-2868-7, 315 p.
Gaiser, T., M.S. Krol, H. Frischkorn and J.C. de Araújo (Eds.). (2003). Global Change and Regional Impacts: Water Availability and Vulnerability of Eco-systems and Society in the semiarid Northeast of Brazil. Berlin: Springer. ISBN: 3-540-43824-6, 428p.
Krol, M.S. (1990). The method of averaging in partial differential equations. PhD-thesis, University of Utrecht, Netherlands.
Research profiles
Teaching
In the BSc Civil Engineering:
- Flood safety and risk in deltas, coordinator of this 2nd year's module (Module 5) and teacher / supervisor of the project with focus on integrated modelling,
- Evaluation of water aspects in spatial planning, in the 2nd year's module Area development,
- Evaluation of simulation models, in the 3rd year's module Preparation BSc project.
In the MSc Civil Engineering and Management:
- Water and climate: reservoirs in drought management and optimization.
In the BSc Honours track Shaping the future:
- Flood safety in the Netherlands.
Affiliated study programs
Courses academic year 2025/2026
Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.
Courses academic year 2024/2025
Over the last years, Maarten Krol has been involved in integrated projects studying
- drought resilience in Dutch-German border regions in the context of climate change (DIWA)
- water allocation for climate-resilient management in Central Asia's transboundary rivers (WE-ACT)
- sustainability aspects of water and land resource use in food and energy consumption in the Earth@lternatives project (ERC-AG) led by Arjen Hoekstra
- the water-land-energy-food nexus linked to EU policies (Horizon2020 project MAGIC)
- water-saving potentials of precise irrigation (FP7 project FIGARO)
Address
University of Twente
Horst Complex (building no. 20), room W200
De Horst 2
7522 LW Enschede
Netherlands
University of Twente
Horst Complex (building no. 20), room BH116
De Horst 2
7522 LW Enschede
Netherlands
University of Twente
Horst Complex W200
P.O. Box 217
7500 AE Enschede
Netherlands
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