Eran Feitelson (Hebrew University) - Institutional Coordinator Hebrew University,  Environment, Group head; Public Policy Group head

Eran Feitelson is a Professor at the Department of Geography of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He is the founder of the Advanced School for Environmental Studies.  He was previously head of the Federmann School for Public Policy and Government (2004-9) and chair of the Department of Geography (2003-4).  He holds an MA in geography and economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University.  He has published over 100 articles in refereed journals and edited volumes on water policy issues, transport policy, environmental policy, and planning.  His research focused on trans-boundary water issues in the Israeli-Arab context, transport and environment policies and land and planning policies and politics.  Recently he has worked on the political and economic facets of large scale seawater desalination, on the definitions of water needs, on the formulation of policy packages, equity facets of transport, earthquake preparedness, and the politics of land and land use planning in Israel.  In the context of earthquake preparedness he led a team that advanced policy packages for residential retrofitting in areas where property values are low, and thus TAMA 38 does not apply.  Following this study he participated in a team that assessed earthquake preparedness in Israel.  Currently he is leading a team that is analyzing the suitability of the different retrofitting policy packages to different municipalities in Israel.  In addition to his academic work Eran Feitelson has participated in several national planning teams in Israel and has been a member of many national committees. He is also the head of the National Parks and Nature Reserves Commission for the last three years, having chaired it for ten years (1999-2009).  He was a Visiting Senior Researcher at Center for Urban Policy and the Environment, Indiana University (1997/8), a non-resident Visiting Fellow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas (2007-11) and a Visiting Professor in the School of Geography and Environment at the University of Oxford (2009-10).  Eran Feitelson has supervised the PhD dissertations of more than 20 students and the masters theses of some 30 students, on a wide variety of topics. These included vulnerability to climate changes, climate change adaptation, policy change, coastal management, land use planning and management and open space issues.