Jurgens, Sharona

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Position / Title
PhD Candidate SISSTEM (Junior Researcher & Junior Lecturer)
Department
SISSTEM (Faculty of Arts and Science)
Email Address
sharona.jurgens@ua.aw
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Fields of Specialization
Chemical Analysis
Green Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
Polymer Pyrolysis
Thermodynamics
Reaction Kinetics
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Last updated October 21, 2025
Introduction
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Biography
Sharona Jurgens is a junior lecturer at the University of Aruba and simultaneously a doctoral student at the Catholic University Leuven (KU Leuven). She has a background in Earth Sciences. Her doctoral research is titled Spatial Analysis of Urban Metabolism in Small Island States and is focused on the interaction between society, nature, and the economy.

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2024 - 20253
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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Mapping for Sustainable Development: Comparing different mapping techniques for monitoring mangroves to reach SDG 15 and 6
    (2024-09-09) Ricker, Britta; Eppinga, Maarten; Jurgens, Sharona; Mijts, Eric
    Mapping the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is necessary to identify where to place localized interventions to meet these goals. The UN Statistics Agency is responsible for establishing and curating SDG indicator data to measure how close or far each country is to achieving the goals. Each UN member state may voluntarily share their SDG indicator data as a form of data sovereignty. While the value of mapping the SDGs is clear, governments are not urged to collect or share spatial data for mapping the SDGs. Many countries with the most missing SDG data are islands, some of the most vulnerable countries (Gosling-Goldsmith et al., 2020). SDG indicators related to the environment can be challenging to collect and require localized data collection strategies, otherwise valuable and vulnerable ecosystems may risk being missed from data collection efforts (Hák et al., 2016; Kulonen et al., 2019).
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Are there limits to growth of tourism on the Caribbean islands? Case-study Aruba
    (Frontiers, 2024) Jurgens, Sharona; Mijts, Eric; Van Rompaey, Anton
    Mass tourism is a major driver of economic growth in the Caribbean. One major trade-off of this economic growth model is the loss of natural areas due to tourism activities and increasing urbanization. Aruba is one of the most tourist intense destinations within the region with a total of 1.1million stay-over tourists in 2019. Moreover, this island has one of the largest population densities in the Caribbean and high-speed urbanization takes place in this formerly rural island state. Therefore, this study aims to assess the islands’ carrying capacity in relation to its limited land resources by means of a geospatial methodological analysis coupled with a correlation analysis between socio-economic indicators and statistics. First, the past and present drivers and characteristics of urbanization are analyzed. Second, the correlation between socio-economic indicators and the number of tourists was assessed. Third, two future scenarios were developed to assess the maximum carrying capacity. From 1986 till 2020, Aruba’s built environment increased from ∼29–60 km2 and translates to one-third of the island. Expansion was characterized by sprawl in the earlier years and changed to infilling in the latter. Furthermore, the results indicate that all socio-economic indicators are strongly positive correlated to tourism. Lastly, the possible maximum physical carrying capacity for yearly visitors and number of inhabitants was calculated to be∼1.7million and 150.000, respectively.We conclude that the proposed methodological framework is robust and adequate to serve as a low budget decision-making tool for sustainable tourism development on islands.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Infrastructure, Risk, and Resilience on Small Island Developing States (SIDS): Navigating the Nexus. Part 1: Conceptual Foundations.
    (2025) Singh, S.; Hossain, M.; Clayton, C.A.; Drakes, C.; Fekete, A.; Fishman, T.; Gooroochurn, M.; Haberl, H.; Hill, L.; Jurgens, Sharona; Mani, L.; Mijts, Eric; Mohammed, S.; Pisini, S.; Thammadi, S.; Thorenz, A.; Wood, M.; Welch, A.
    Two-thirds of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depend on infrastructure investment, as they are the backbone of production, consumption and our daily life, hence the material basis of societal well-being. As economies develop, the demand for new and/or improved services rise, such as transport, sanitation, education, and health. These services are delivered by infrastructure (also referred to as ‘material stocks’ or simply ‘stocks’) that drive a self-reinforcing cycle of resource consumption: to first build and then to maintain and operate the stocks, creating a “lock-in-effect”. From a sustainability perspective, it is necessary to observe the relationships between infrastructure development, resource demands, and the societal services stocks provide, referred to as the “stock-flow-service” (SFS) nexus. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) suffer disproportionally from the adverse effects of global warming such as hurricanes, flooding, droughts, and sea level rise. Between 1970 and 2020, SIDS collectively lost $153 billion from extreme events, largely from infrastructure damage and the consequent breakdown of critical services. Constrained by their small size and available resources, SIDS rely heavily on imports for most of their construction needs, often through complex supply-chain configurations increasingly threatened by volatile markets, rising transport costs and geopolitical concerns. At the same time, service needs from infrastructure are also changing in SIDS. Climate impacts are escalating the need for hard-engineering climate adaptation measures such as sea-walls, groynes, dykes, or artificial islands, hence driving the demand for more resources. Unplanned and unrestrained infrastructure development heightens the risk of maladaptation, especially in climate-vulnerable SIDS. By recognizing the complex dynamics of material stock, flows, and service provision, policymakers can mitigate systemic risks and safeguard the long-term well-being of island societies.