Professor Okke Batelaan

Strategic Professorship

College of Science and Engineering

place Information Science & Technology (319)
GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, South Australia

Okke Batelaan is Strategic Professor in Hydro(geo)logy at Flinders University since 2012. He was Dean of the School of the Environment at Flinders from 2015-2017. Formerly he was for more than 20 years faculty member at the Free University Brussels and the KU Leuven, Belgium. Professor Batelaan has a broad experience in teaching groundwater hydrology, groundwater modelling, GIS and remote sensing for hydrological applications. He supervised more than 200 MSc/PhD students from all continents. He has extensive research experience and a publication record in shallow groundwater hydrology and modeling, recharge-discharge estimation and modeling, urban hydrology and distributed modelling, ecohydrology and impacts of landuse and climate change on groundwater systems. He coordinated and participated in a large number of projects in Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and South America.

  • Coordinating and partner in projects on the groundwater resources of the (Northern) Adelaide plains, funded by the Goyder Institute.
  • Chief investigator in the ARC-Linkage project 'Cross-cultural management of freshwater on resource-constrained islands', which focusses on the water resources of Millingimbi island, NT.
  • Partner in ACIAR funded projects in Laos and Vietnam on developing assessment methods for sustainable use of groundwater resources for agriculture.
  • Partner in a study on forest water use in the SE of South Australia.
  • Editor-in-chief of Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies and associate editor of Journal of Hydrology.
Qualifications
PhD in Engineering (Free University Brussels); MSc Hydrogeology (Free University Amsterdam)
Honours, awards and grants
  • Honorable medal of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences (2010)
  • (Co-)Promotor of more than 100 research and educational national and international projects
  • Research leader for Goyder Institute for Water Research funded project: 'Assessment of Adelaide Plains Groundwater Resources'. See interview: ABC TV - Groundwater study with Professor Okke Batelaan
Teaching interests

I am coordinator of the Master of Science Water Resources Management, see for details: Water Resources Management postgraduate program

Topic coordinator
ENVS9722 Integrated Water Management
EASC9700 NCGRT Australian Groundwater School
ENVS3760 Environmental Agency Placement
Topic lecturer
ENVS2761 Hydrology
ENVS8771 Ecohydrology
Expert for media contact
Groundwater
Hydrology
Water resources
Available for contact via
Or contact the media team
Media expertise
  • Groundwater
  • Hydrology
  • Water resources
Further information

See for complete list of publications: publicationslist.org/okke.batelaan