Vilane Goncalves Sales

Vilane Goncalves Sales

Dr Vilane Goncalves Sales

Postdoctoral Researcher

Programme Area: Programme Area 3 - Land-Ocean Fluxes and Transformation
Working Group: WG Deliberation, Valuation and Sustainability

+49 (0)421 23800 - 0

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Office: Fahrenheitstr. 8
28359 Bremen
Room: 3114 (1st floor)

Curriculum Vitae: Dr Vilane Goncalves Sales

Research interests

I am an environmental economist. My research asks how climate change affects coastal economies and communities, and which policies can help them adapt. I combine applied microeconometrics, spatial analysis and text-as-data methods with remote sensing, climate and socio-economic data.

At ZMT, I lead Work Package 1 of the STEPS project (Sustainable Tourism: Evolving Paradigms). I use statistical topic modelling and natural language processing to study how tourism policies in tropical coastal destinations address ecosystem protection, and how these policies have shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before joining ZMT, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the CMCC Foundation (SEA-LIMITHS project). There I studied the economic impacts of sea-level rise on Italy's coastal hospitality sector, combining geospatial data, machine learning and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling. Earlier, at the University of Bern and during my PhD at the University of Birmingham, I worked on disaster risk (landslides and tornado outbreaks) and on deforestation and its satellite monitoring in Brazil.

Keywords: climate adaptation economics, sustainability transitions, coastal tourism vulnerability, climate risk governance, applied economic modelling, text-as-data methods

Current projects and involvement

  • STEPS (Sustainable Tourism: Evolving Paradigms), ZMT, since 2025. I lead Work Package 1 (data science and quantitative social science), using topic modelling and natural language processing to analyse tourism policy documents from tropical coastal destinations. Project coordinated at ZMT by Prof. Dr. Marie Fujitani.
  • Research Collaborator, CMCC Foundation (Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change), Venice, since 2025: climate impacts and coastal vulnerability.
  • Member, Working Group 5 (Climate Change and Natural Hazards), COST Action CA22122 RethinkBlue, 2023–2027.
  • Research Fellow, Earth System Governance Project; member of the Organizing Committee of the South-South Initiative (SSI).
  • Member, ZMT Early Career Researchers (ECR) Representatives, since 2026.
  • Mentee, Leibniz Mentoring Programme 2026/27.

Past projects and positions

  • SEA-LIMITHS (Sea Level Rise Impacts on Italian Hospitality), Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (grant 101106544), Ca' Foscari University of Venice and CMCC Foundation, 2023–2025. Economic impacts of sea-level rise on Italy's coastal hospitality sector, using geospatial data, machine learning and CGE modelling.
  • Postdoctoral Researcher, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, 2019–2023. Environmental econometrics and climate change economics, including extreme value theory for disaster risk. Taught the MSc courses Environmental Econometrics and Environmental Economics for Non-Economists.
  • PhD in Economics, University of Birmingham, 2015–2019. Thesis: Essays on the Economics and Policies of Deforestation in Brazil.

Publications

  1. Sales, V.G. (2026). Divergent risk patterns across coastal hospitality sectors in the Northern Adriatic. Open Research Europe, 6:190 [version 1; peer review: 2 approved, 2 approved with reservations]. https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.23489.1
  2. Sales, V.G. (2025). Sea Level Rise: Scientific Evidence, Socio-Economic Realities, and Adaptation Challenges for Coastal Communities. In: Sea Level Rise: Implications for Human Rights, Security and Peace, pp. 17–60. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-89171-7_2
  3. Sales, V.G. (2025). A coastal hospitality sector database for vulnerability assessments in Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Data in Brief, 62, 111921. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2025.111921
  4. Sales, V.G. (2023). Assessing the impact of governance policies on landslide risk in Brazilian municipalities. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 99, 104058. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.104058
  5. Sales, V.G. and Strobl, E. (2023). Using extreme value theory to assess the mortality risk of tornado outbreaks. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 14(1), 14–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-023-00474-1
  6. Sales, V.G. (2023). Modelling non-linear deforestation trends for an ecological tension zone in Brazil. Science of Remote Sensing, 7, 100076. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.srs.2023.100076
  7. Fornalé, E., Cristani, F. and Sales, V.G. (2022). Sustainable management of fisheries resources in a time of climate change: An overview of initiatives in the Mediterranean region. Italian Yearbook of International Law Online, 31(1), 171–187. https://doi.org/10.1163/22116133-03101009
  8. Sales, V.G., Strobl, E. and Elliott, R.J.R. (2022). Cloud cover and its impact on Brazil's deforestation satellite monitoring program: Evidence from the cerrado biome of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Applied Geography, 140, 102651. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2022.102651
  9. Lima, E.L., Vital, T.W., Melo, A.S., Sales, V.G. and Barbosa, S.K.G. (2014). Crédito rural: Uma análise da atuação e características do Pronaf Mulher. Informe Econômico (UFPI), pp. 22–29.

Links

Personal website | Google Scholar | ORCID | LinkedIn | GitHub