Biography

Bénédicte Rulleau holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Montesquieu Bordeaux IV (2008). She has done a postdoctoral work at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and has been a Lecturer at the University of Versailles-Saint Quentin en Yvelines from 2009 to 2016. Since 1 January 2017 she is a researcher in economics at Irstea Bordeaux (France).
Bénédicte is working within the Water Infrastructure Asset Management (GPIE) team of the research Unit Environment, territory and infrastructure (ETBX). Research carried out by the GPIE team focuses on producing knowledge, methods and tools to help public authorities and network managers to create optimized asset management strategies for water infrastructure. It is organized around three themes: (i) evaluating and understanding the performance and risks linked to infrastructure, (ii) optimizing asset management strategies as part of a long-term projection and (iii) designing and developing operational methods and tools.
In her research Bénédicte mobilises quantitative analysis techniques (statistics, micro-econometrics) and uses the users as an entry point. She mainly tries to assess their willingness to pay and preferences for the service performance, for asset management policies, for an increased resilience of the water distribution system, etc. but also to understand their knowledge, perceptions and expectations. For this, she uses monetary valuation techniques and is particularly interested in multi-attribute valuation methods such as the Choice Experiment.
Bénédicte has published over 30 articles in scientific journals, as well as technical articles. She has served as an invited editor of a Special Issue in Water Resources and Economics. She has been part of the scientific/organisation committee of several international conferences and workshops (e.g. 8th IWA Leading-Edge Conference on Strategic Asset Management of water and wastewater infrastructure conference, Vancouver, 2019; Conference “Infrastructure Asset Management, knowledge and know-how”, Bordeaux, 2017; 3rd conference of the French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Bordeaux, 2016; 4th Workshop on non-market valuation, Bordeaux, 2016). She is currently supervising a PhD student and coordinating a project entitled “Global change and performance of drinking water supply: Long term adaptation of infrastructures asset management strategies”.
Finally, Bénédicte has served as an expert in the French national assessment of ecosystems and ecosystem services. She is currently a member of the scientific council of the basin committee of the Adour-Garonne Water Agency and a member of the Member of the Management Committee of IWA Specialist Group on Strategic Asset Management (SAM-SG).