Dr. Diana Reckien is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management (PGM) of the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands.

Until 2022, Diana was also Coordinating Lead Author of the Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), coordinating work for 'Chapter 17: Decision-making options for managing risk'.

Before joining the University of Twente Dr. Reckien has worked at Climate Analytics Berlin, Germany, Columbia University in the City of New York, USA, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. She was also a Social Development Specialist for the Asian Development Bank in parallel and during parts of these positions.

Dr. Reckien received her PhD (magna cum laude) in Geography in 2007 from the University of Marburg, Germany, in cooperation with the John-Moores-University Liverpool, UK. Her PhD focused on “Intra-regional migration in formerly industrialised regions: Qualitative Modelling of household location decisions as an input to policy and plan making in Leipzig/Germany and Wirral/Liverpool/UK”.

Dr. Reckien is Associate Editor for Urban Climate and on the Editorial Board of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.  Additionally, Dr. Reckien was Guest editor of Special Issues on: 

• "Climate Decision-Making" in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
• "Climate Change and Simulation/Gaming" in Gaming & Simulation 
• "Innovative Geo-Information Tools for Governance" of the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information  

Dr. Diana Reckien's research focuses on the interface of climate change and governance, mostly in urban settings and with a justice perspective, such as:

• Climate change impacts and adaptation, e.g. differences across socio-economic groups;
• Adaptation synergies, co-benefits and trade-offs;
• Differential social vulnerabilities;
• Climate change mitigation, mainly in the transport and building sector;
• Climate change gaming;
• Climate change migration;
• Climate change policy and practice in intercultural comparisons.

While striving for policy- and planning-relevant research, she enjoys working on method developments for interdisciplinary and complex research problems, e.g. investigating the suitability of Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping, Qualitative Modelling, cognitive mapping and other network and system's dynamics approaches for the assessment of impacts of extreme weather events and socially sensible adaptation options. She also explores the integration of fuzzy knowledge, stakeholder experiences and qualitative data into more formal, quantitative research methods and applications. Most of her research concentrates on large urban areas in Europe, India and the US.

Recent projects/ research groups

1. Title & Aim: HABITABLE - Linking Climate Change, Habitability and Social Tipping Points: Scenarios for Climate Migration. As part of this project we evaluate the different motivations and reasons of migration, including due to environmental and climate change, using Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM).

• Role: Co-PI
• Team: Co-PI, Post-Doc

2. Title & Aim: RiskPACC - Integrating Risk Perception and Action to enhance Civil protection-Citizen interaction. In RiskPACC we investigate the interactions between citizens and Civil Protection Authorities to jointly identify their needs and develop potential procedural and technical solutions to build enhanced disaster resilience.

• Role: Researcher
• Team: Co-PI, Researcher, PhD

3. Title & Aim: LOCALISED - Building a low-carbon, climate resilient future: Research and innovation in support of the European Green Deal. In the LOCALISED project we are responsible for the identification of interactions (synergies, co-benefits, trade-offs) of adpatation and mitigation measures to provide input data for the modelling efforts to identify different local mitigation pathways to a carbon-neutral Europe.

• Role: Co-PI
• Team: Co-PI, Researcher, PhD

4. Title & Aim: EURO-LCP Initiative - Update of the inventory and analysis of Local Climate Plans in Europe. As part of that initiative Diana analyses the preparedness of European cities with respect to climate change planning, evaluating urban climate change adaptation and mitigation plans in European cities with a team of about 40 researchers from the EU-28.

• Role: Group leader, Coordinator
• Team: Network of urban researchers from EU-28 countries

5. Title & aim: COOLSCHOOLS - Nature-based Climate Action from Schools to Cities

• Role: Co-PI
• Team: Co-PI, 3 colleagues, 1 PhD 

PhD Students

As part of these projects and other work I currently co-supervise the PhD students

• Paula Presser,
• Gerard Martinez Görbig,
• Akshay Anand,
• Vhalinavo Khavagali, and 
• Wala Abdelmuati.

Current teaching/ courses/ lectures: 

University of Twente:

• Core Course Global Challenges - Local Actions
• Elective Local Climate Change Planning
• Course Risk-sensitive Planning Studio

Cooperation with the Institute for Housing Studies (IHS) Rotterdam for the African Local Government Academy (ALGA):

• MOOC: Planning for Climate Change in African Cities