David Garcia

PhD Student, GRI

Geospatial Analysis

David is a mapmaker. He is a PhD student focusing on crowdsourcing geographic information for community development and humanitarian action. He used to work as a geographer and urban planner for the United Nations and other organisations in places hit by disaster (Super Typhoon Haiyan) or conflict (Marawi siege) in the Philippines. Broadly, his academic, professional, civic work has been for and with cities and communities at the crossings of crises and conflict in his country. In the fields about cartography, spatial planning and geographic information, he tries to combine a computational, critical, and creative approach. His hobby is to make good maps, which he shares for free (www.mapmakerdavid.com). David is also a volunteer of OpenStreetMap (OSM), which is about sharing and making “free geographic data for the world” (www.wiki.openstreetmap.org).

Martin Nguyen

PhD Student, GRI

Geospatial Analysis

Martin completed a Master’s degree in Applied Data Science at UC, during which he developed a specific interest in the versatility of Artificial Intelligence. He is pursuing a PhD in the area of data science methods for flood risk assessment. Specifically, his research will focus on advancing methods for uncertainty estimation in flood inundation modelling, using machine learning approaches.

Martin says that he feels so honoured to be working as part of the MBIE Endeavour research programme, “Reducing flood inundation hazard and risk across Aotearoa/New Zealand”, supervised by Prof. Matt Wilson and Dr. Emily Lane (NIWA). This programme not only offers him many opportunities to improve his data handling competencies and to explore practical geospatial data with advanced geospatial techniques, it also gives him a chance to employ what he studies to contribute to the safety of the public

Supervisors:

Prof. Matthew Wilson

Dr. Emily Lane

Sidney Wong

PhD Student, GRI

Linguistic Geospatial Analysis

Sidney is excited to be offered the opportunity through the Geospatial Research Institute Toi Hangarau PhD Scholarship to model the social and linguistic characteristics of local populations using geo-referenced language data. He was attracted by the transdisciplinary nature of this project and he looks forward to exploring the possibilities of geospatial linguistics under the supervision of Dr. Jonathan Dunn and Dr. Ben Adams.

He has long been involved with the Linguistics community at UC. He completed a BSc in Linguistics and a Master of Linguistics at UC. He is currently on track to complete a Master of Applied Data Science which he has been studying alongside his role as an Iwi Data Analyst at Stats NZ. In his role, Sidney works with hapū, iwi, and iwi-related groups across Aotearoa to gauge their data needs – this includes consulting, sourcing, extracting, and producing statistics to meet their data requirements.

Sidney is an active member of the community in Ōtautahi. He is the co-chair of Qtopia, and is on the board of the Christchurch Heroes Sports Trust and Population Health Advisory Board at Pegasus Health. He also maintains a social media presence for the New Zealand Linguistics Society as their social media officer.

Supervisors:

Dr. Jonathan Dunn

Dr. Ben Adams

Andrea Pozo Estívariz

PhD Student, GRI

Geospatial Analysis

I am a civil engineer from Spain. Since my Master’s I have been working in the GeoOcean research group (University of Cantabria), having the opportunity to deep into different research topics such as the development and prediction models for tropical cyclone activity, wave modelling, rain fields parameterization or flood modelling and mapping. I have just started my PhD in the area of water resource management, focused on the development of advancing methods of rapid flood risk scenario assessment using hybrid approaches of hydraulic modelling and machine learning.

My PhD is supervised by Prof. Matt Wilson (UC), Dr. Emily Lane (NIWA) and Prof. Fernando Méndez (University of Cantabria, Spain) and it is part of the MBIE Endeavour research programme, “Reducing flood inundation hazard and risk across Aotearoa/New Zealand”. I am very motivated because this programme not only offers me the chance to work with cutting-edge techniques and learn more about such interesting topics for me like climate change; but also I feel I can contribute with my work to improve the quality of life of all the people who suffer from floods.

Supervisors:
Prof. Matt Wilson (UC)

Dr. Emily Lane (NIWA)

Prof. Fernando Méndez (University of Cantabria)

David Pedley

PhD Student, GRI

Geospatial Analysis

David has a professional background as an environmental lawyer and has recently completed a Master’s degree in landscape architecture at Lincoln University. Through this experience, David has established a strong interest in the potential of geospatial analysis to help develop effective solutions to complex environmental problems. David’s PhD is in urban forestry and will focus on the conflict between housing intensification and the loss of urban trees on private residential land in New Zealand cities. This research will incorporate deep learning techniques to detect changes in canopy cover over time and explore potential solutions to increase the retention of urban trees in the face of ongoing intensification pressure. David is very grateful for the opportunity to pursue this research through the Geospatial Research Institute Toi Hangarau PhD Scholarship, working alongside supervisors Dr Justin Morgenroth and Dr Grant Pearse.

Supervisors:

Dr Justin Morgenroth (UC), Dr Grant Pearse (Scion)

Josiah Millar

Masters Student, Geo Health Laboratory

Josiah is a current masters student enrolled in the Masters of Urban Resilience and Renewal. His thesis is focussed on identifying and predicting hotspots of fatal car crashes across the Ōtautahi/Christchurch road network. This is being done alongside Canterbury Road Policing as the community partner in an evidence based policing strategy designed to proactively target areas of high crash frequencies to assist in the reduction of New Zealand’s road toll.

Supervisors:

Senior supervisor – Carolynne Hultquist

Co-supervisor – Malcolm Campbell

Susie (Bingyu) Deng

PhD Student, Geo Health Laboratory

Susie (Bingyu) Deng is a PhD candidate in Health Geospatial Science. Her skills include GIS analysis, longitudinal modeling, and programming. Her research primarily focuses on the impact of neighbourhood on health and wellbeing, with a particular focus on greenspaces and mental health. A broad question that her research will answer is, do the places where people lived have an impact on people’s health? Her objectives include investigating people’s migration patterns throughout their lives, evaluating socioecological exposures of places where people lived, examining the association between the accumulated socioecological exposures throughout people’s lives with their subsequent mental health conditions.

Supervisors:

Senior supervisor – Matt Hobbs

Co-supervisor – Malcolm Campbell

Associate supervisors – Joseph Boden and Geri McLeod from University of Otago

Phoebe Eggleton

PhD Student, Geo Health Laboratory

Phoebe is a PhD candidate at the University of Canterbury in the School of Health Sciences, which she is now pursuing after completing a Master of Spatial Analysis for Public Health in 2021 also at the University of Canterbury. Her research topic is focused on the relationship between location-based exposure to the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (2010-11), and the associated mental health outcomes. Phoebe will be using spatial methods throughout her project to determine how a cohort was exposed, and how they have relocated in the aftermath of disaster.

Supervisors:

Associate Professor Malcolm Campbell (UC, GHL, GRI)

Dr Matt Hobbs (UC, GHL, GRI)

Dr Geri McLeod (Christchurch Health and Development Study, University of Otago)

Professor Joe Boden (Christchurch Health and Development Study, University of Otago)

Prof. Elena Motchanova

Head of the Statistics Consulting Unit, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury

Dr Christoph Bartneck

Associate Professor and Director of Postgraduate Studies at HIT Lab NZ, University of Canterbury

Dr Mehdi Keyvan-Ekbatani

Senior Lecturer, Civil & Natural Resources Engineering, University of Canterbury

Dr Simon Hoermann

Senior Lecturer, School of Product Design, University of Canterbury

User Experience researcher and academic in the School of Product Design, working in the area of human interface technology for health, training, and simulation applications.

Dr Marwan Katurji

Rutherford Discovery Fellow, Senior Lecturer in Atmospheric Dynamics,  School of Earth and Environment, University of Canterbury

Dr Marwan Katurji specialises in surface-atmosphere interactions. His research interest is in modelling, simulating, measuring and analysing atmospheric phenomena, using advanced in-situ, aerial and remote sensing measurements and numerical modelling techniques. He is developing new approaches to tackle fundamental research questions in the field of atmospheric boundary-layer turbulence that leverages on a multidisciplinary approach of engineering and science. Marwan is particularly interested in coherent turbulent structures within the first 1km of our atmosphere above ground level (also called the atmospheric boundary-layer). These structures form the unique fabric of turbulence that controls the spatial variability of temperature and moisture across our landscape.

Dr John Reid

Senior Research Fellow, University of Canterbury

John is a specialist in sustainability transitions.  He is a Senior Research Fellow the Ngāi Tahu Centre, at the University of Canterbury.  John works with iwi to plan sustainable development pathways in agriculture, forestry, and fishing.  His current research focus is on nature-based solutions to climate change, declining biodiversity, and excess nutrient emissions.  John is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand and has several corporate and public governance roles.

Dr Delwyn Moller

Adjunct Professor, Department of Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering, University of Auckland

Justin Morgenroth

Associate Professor, Postgraduate Director of Studies, School of Forestry | Kura Ngahere, University of Canterbury

I’m interested in understanding urban trees and the critical roles they play in cities around the world. The trees that comprise urban forests face considerable abiotic and biotic stress, but help to make cities liveable, providing residents with healthy, sustainable, and desirable places to live and work. To that end, I research the growth, function, management, and ecosystem services of trees in urban environments. To do so, I work extensively with remote sensing or earth observation techniques, including lidar, as well as aerial and satellite imagery.

Ben Adams

Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Canterbury

In my research I am exploring new ways of using computing technology to advance human understanding of our environment and world. I am interested in understanding, modelling, and improving how the people who want to learn about the world (e.g., scientists, students, and policy makers) interact with and make decisions based on geographic knowledge represented in a computer. The research I undertake is both explanatory and constructive. In the first case I work to develop theories that explain how the information that we produce and share in digital form reflects human conceptualizations of the world. In the second case I build software systems that help people use geographic information better to solve problems. My research methodology is informed by methods from data science, machine learning, spatial information science, interactive systems, and cognitive science.

Professor Matthew Wilson

Kaihautū | Director, Geospatial Research Institute Toi Hangarau

Ahorangi | Professor, School of Earth and Environment – Te Kura Aronukurangi

Addressing key research questions around Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), as well as associated management and governance topics related to spatial data management, spatial data integration and sharing, interoperability and standards, data models, governance, and legal issues associated with open data and data privacy