Dr Paul Somerville is Deputy Director of Risk Frontiers. He was born in Armidale, NSW and received his B.Sc. degree in Geophysics from the University of New England. He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Geophysics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and spent two years as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo.

Dr Somerville has experienced numerous damaging earthquakes first hand, including the 1989 Loma Prieta, 1994 Northridge and 1995 Kobe earthquakes, and was involved in post-earthquake reconnaissance of these earthquakes, as well as other earthquakes in California, Japan, and Taiwan.

His main interests are in earthquake and tsunami hazards, and he has quantified these hazards and applied them in engineering practice to the seismic design and analysis of major buildings, bridges, dams and power generation facilities in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United States, and many other countries around the Pacific Rim. Dr Somerville has been involved in the development of building codes in the United States, and led developments in the engineering characterization of near-fault ground motions. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Seismological Society of America and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, and was Chairman of the EERI panel that wrote the NSF sponsored report entitled “Securing Society against Catastrophic Earthquake Losses.”

Emeritus Professor Russell Blong retired as Director of Risk Frontiers in July 2003 after more than 30 years on the staff at Macquarie University. He still plays an active role in the supervision of graduate students, liaison with industry partners and in dreaming up seemingly impossible projects for others to work on.

Russell holds Masters degrees in Geography (Auckland) and Engineering Science (UNSW) and a PhD in Geomorphology (Sydney). He has researched a wide range of natural hazards and their consequences but his passions include volcanic, earthquake, flood and landslide hazards and their consequences in Australia, the South Pacific and Asia. His current interests include building damage assessments, loss modelling and integrated risk rating. He has published ten books and edited volumes and more than 200 research papers. He is the Past-President of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards (the Natural Hazards Society).

Laraine Hunter MSc(Hons) has been working as a natural hazards analyst for Risk Frontiers since 1994.

Recent projects include the centre's Earthquake Model for Australian Cities and Indonesia and continuation of Flood Risk Assessment, which evaluates risk at a property level (NHQ Volume 5, Issue 1).

Areas of interest include using GIS for modelling Natural Hazard Risk and programming models in Visual Basic and Fortran.

Laraine administers the local NT network, having gained a Certificate in Network Administration.

Roy Leigh has been a Risk Scientist with Risk Frontiers since 1998. Roy holds an Honours degree in Mechanical Engineering, a Graduate Diploma in Environmental Studies, an MSc (Environmental Economics) and a Masters of Project Management.

He has worked for engineering and environmental consulting companies and as a research fellow at the Climatic Impacts Centre at Macquarie University.

Roy’s research interests include the economic impacts of natural hazards, damage estimation models and techniques, the value of forecasts and warnings, and the potential impacts of global climate change on the insurance industry.

Among other things, Roy is heavily involved in the research and development work associated with Risk Frontiers' hail loss estimation model (HailAUS) and flood risk rating and damage model (FloodAUS).

Keping Chen is a Risk Scientist with Risk Frontiers. His main research interests are in hazards risk assessment, using GIS, remote sensing and applied mathematics. He is actively involved in various applied projects on quantitative risk assessment and catastrophe loss modelling, such as quantifying bushfire penetration into urban areas, developing natural hazard risk ratings at multiple spatial units ranging from individual addresses to postcodes, and programming flood loss estimation modules of FloodAUS.

Broadly, Keping’s research reflects the duality between physical and human geography, and is in pursuit of spatially integrated risk science. Some topics under investigation include (1) the integration of physical environmental and socioeconomic data and their scale issues; (2) the importance of selecting appropriate spatial units of analysis for effective risk assessment; (3) the use of geostatistics for addressing spatial and temporal non-stationarities and associated uncertainties in risk modelling; and (4) the development of suitable decision support methods and tools for facilitating risk management in practice.

Keping completed his PhD thesis in 2000. His thesis developed an integrated approach to natural hazards risk assessment in a GIS environment that includes three components – data integration, risk assessment tasks and risk decision-making. He obtained his MSc degree from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (State Key Lab for Water Environment and Simulation), Beijing Normal University, China.

Ryan Crompton Ryan Crompton is a Catastrophe Risk Analyst with Risk Frontiers. Ryan has a BSc (Advanced Mathematics) and Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting. He has previous experience in numerical modelling of oceans in order to better understand El Nino-Southern Oscillation events.

Ryan is responsible for the research and development work associated with Risk Frontiers' tropical cyclone loss estimation model (CyclAUS). He also has a strong interest in Alternative Risk Transfer, particularly the pricing and structure of Catastrophe Bonds.

Kat Haynes is currently working on a contract for the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre to promote community self-sufficiency for bushfire safety. This involves evaluating the implementation of current policy, the identification of vulnerable groups and an assessment of the success of community-led projects in increasing resilience to bushfires.
http://www.bushfirecrc.com/

Working on a research project with the child-focused NGO Plan International and the Institute of Development Studies in the UK to help progress the opportunities for child-centred risk reduction activities in the Philippines, El Salvador and Indonesia.

Climate Change and Disasters Project: Child-Centred Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines and El Salvador Plan UK. click here

Climate Change and Disasters: Children in a Changing Climate. click here

Children's Voices in Disaster Policy Spaces. click here

Embedding Climate Change Adaption in Development Process. click here

Kat is also working on a flash flooding project with the NSW SES.

Christina Magill's main research interests are:

• Numerical simulation of volcanic ash dispersal
• Physical, economic and social impacts of volcanic eruptions
• Methodologies for calculating natural hazard risk

Christina recently commenced a Macquarie University Innovation Fellowship with the aim of developing a probabilistic volcanic hazard and risk calculation model for Tokyo, Japan.  Christina has previously developed a model that numerically simulates volcanic ash fall hazard from all potentially active volcanoes within New Zealand and calculates the economic impact expected from these events.  This was completed during a PhD carried out at Macquarie University and was extended during a two year post-doctoral fellowship.

Felipe Dimer de Oliveira has recently joined Risk Frontiers as a Risk Scientist. He has an MSc in Physics from Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil and a PhD in Quantum Optics from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His interests include the modelling of stochastic processes, general physics and science education. Felipe is currently involved in the development of Risk Frontier’s seismic loss models and a new research programme on earthquake forecasting.

Megan Ling is a Risk Analyst with Risk Frontiers. Megan has a BSc (Atmospheric Science and Environmental Management), Assoc. Dip. in Business and Certificate in Financial Markets. She has previous experience in banking and finance before joining the team at Risk Frontiers in late 2006.

Lucinda Coates has recently returned to Risk Frontiers after a few years’ stint at Forests NSW.  She had been a Risk Scientist with the former Natural Hazards Research Centre since its formation in 1994. Even further back, she was involved in the initial compilation of historical records of Australian natural hazards.  This record has now evolved to a complex relational database with Lucinda playing a key role in the transformation.  The databases focus on historical spatial and temporal fatality trends for nine natural perils – tropical cyclones, floods, bushfires, wind gusts, hail falls, earthquakes, tornadoes, landslides and tsunamis – and include around 5,000 events from the last 100 years.

Lucinda holds a Graduate Diploma and an MSc in Geosciences, and has a wealth of experience in literature research and data analysis.  Recent/current projects include bushfire fatalities and decision analysis; flash flood fatalities, damage and consequences and, of course, the continued updating, maintenance and development of Risk Frontiers’ unique databases on the occurrence and consequences of natural hazards in Australia.  Lucinda also manages a small reference library.

Areas of interest include the vulnerability of sectors of society to natural hazards, historical hazard events and organisation of absolutely anything, from relational databases to morning teas.

Carol Robertson is Risk Frontiers' Office Manager. Carol is an experienced administrator and personal assistant who has worked in a wide variety of fields developing strong presentation, organisation and communication skills. Carol is responsible for: the production of newsletters, reports, presentations; the design and maintenance of the Risk Frontiers' website; email publishing of briefing notes for sponsors and administrative tasks which ensure the smooth-running of the centre.

Susanna Jenkins began her PhD at Risk Frontiers in April 2005. She is interested in the hazards from explosive volcanic eruptions. It is anticipated that her project will involve physical and loss modelling, particularly in relation to multi-phase eruptions and their economic impact.

Susanna has worked on and around volcanoes in Italy, Mexico, America and New Zealand. Research projects include volcanic hazard and risk evaluation, volcano monitoring and caldera unrest.

She holds an MSc in Geophysical Hazards from University College London and a BSc in Geology from the University of Leeds, UK.

Shayne McGregor is expanding on his Masters (hons) research which investigated the Pacific Ocean’s decadal sea surface temperature (SST) variability. These decadal variations of SST have been entitled the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in the scientific literature and are proposed to have links with the frequency, intensity and predictability of ENSO. Recent research has also shown links between the phase of the IPO/PDO and the influence of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on variables of Australian Climate, such as rainfall, temperature, stream flow and drought. The main goals of Shayne’s PhD research are to:

(i) investigate the mechanisms forcing the observed Pacific Ocean decadal SST variability using a series of ocean circulation models; (ii) develop a method that uses the newly identified mechanisms forcing this decadal SST variability to predict decadal variations in Pacific Ocean SSTs; and (iii) test the usefulness of this newly developed predictability method on identifying the probability of changes in ENSO frequency and amplitude.

Associates:

Bruce Thomas is principal of Thomas Partners Advisory, an independent sustainability management and risk management consultancy. He spent almost 30 years in the insurance industry, holding senior management positions for Swiss Reinsurance Company in Australia and Asia. He has been active in developing business opportunities in many Asia Pacific markets.

Bruce is Finance Director of Environment Business Australia Ltd, a member of the Steering Committee of the National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development and a former member of the United Nations Environment Program Australasian Insurance Advisory Committee. He is a former Chairman of Insurance Statistics Australia Ltd and served on many insurance industry committees and working parties working with Government and industry. Bruce has presented papers to conferences in Japan, Singapore, The Philippines, India and New Zealand as well as many events in Australia.

Bruce holds a degree of Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne and attended an Advanced Executive Education Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a CPA, a Fellow and Certified Insurance Professional of ANZIIF and a member of the AICD.

Kevin Cheung joined Macquarie University as a Senior Lecturer in the Climate Risk Concentration of Research Excellence (CORE) and Department of Physical Geography in February 2008 after spending three years in the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction of Taiwan as an Associate Research Fellow. Kevin’s educational background was in Physics, with a BSc (Hons) from University of Hong Kong (1989) and a Master of Philology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1992). He then turned to atmospheric sciences and finished a Ph.D. dissertation on tropical cyclone forecasting at the City University of Hong Kong in 1999. With support from the Croucher Foundation, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Meteorology Department of Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California for two years and was then promoted to Research Assistant Professor. In 2004 he joined his wife in Taiwan and at the same time extended his experience to operational mitigation work.

Kevin’s research interests include all aspects of tropical cyclones such as their formation, motion, intensity, structure, rainfall, and climate variability of activity. In the near future this research activity will be extended to intra-seasonal, inter-annual and decadal variability in the Asian-Australian monsoon, dynamical systems approaches to weather and climate modeling, climate change impacts, extreme events and risk analysis.

John Handmer, RMIT, is Innovation Professor in Risk and Sustainability at RMIT University in Melbourne, where he is head of the Centre for Risk and Community Safety in the School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences.  He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University, and Visiting professor at Middlesex University.  He holds a BA and PhD from ANU, and a MA from the University of Toronto. 

Before joining RMIT he was at the Flood Hazard Research Centre of Middlesex University in London, where he was Professor of Environmental Geography and Director of Research for the Faculty of Social Science and Education.  His current research is dedicated to improving community resilience and sustainability through providing the evidence base for policy and practice.  As a Research Leader in the Australian-New Zealand Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre he coordinates research on self-reliant communities. 

Daryl McClure has ten years of experience in seismic engineering and risk consulting spanning hazard analysis, engineering design and probabilistic loss estimation. He holds degrees in Structural Engineering (BEng), Earthquake Engineering (MSc, DIC) and Finance (MiF).

Daryl has an extensive understanding of the seismic design and vulnerability of structures ranging from commercial buildings to heavy industrial facilities and a comprehensive knowledge of construction practice adopted in the Americas, Asia, Middle East, Australasia, the South Pacific and Europe. His past research activities include recommendations and provisions for EC8, the European seismic design code, and the publication of a number of related technical articles in international engineering journals.

Through his risk consulting Daryl has a working knowledge of the insurance industry, layered reinsurance treaties and a particular interest in portfolio engineering, dynamic financial analysis and alternative risk transfer using the capital markets and OTC financial instruments.

Neil Holbrook is currently an Associate Professor in Climatoloty and Climate Change at the University of Tasmania. Prior to this Neil was a senior lecturer in atmospheric science at Macquarie University, Sydney.  He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney (1986-89) majoring in applied mathematics and marine sciences, gaining first class honours in physical oceanography.  During 1990, he was employed as a research assistant at the University of Sydney and spent two months as a vacation scholar at CSIRO Division of Oceanography in Hobart.  He completed his PhD in physical oceanography in the Marine Studies Centre/School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney (1991-94).  He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Climatic Impacts Centre (CIC), Macquarie University (Oct 1994 – Jan 1996) and spent three months as a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colorado, USA.  In 1996, he was appointed lecturer in atmospheric science at Macquarie University and promoted to senior lecturer in 2001.

Neil’s main research interests are in regional- to large-scale ocean dynamics and climate of the Pacific (and Indo-Pacific) Ocean.  He has interests in (i) planetary scale wave dynamics [Rossby and Kelvin wave propagation], (ii) interannual-decadal time scale ocean and atmosphere variability [El Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO); Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO); Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO/PDO)], (iii) long time scale (ocean) climate change [thermohaline circulation], and (iv) dynamic/climatic influences on ocean (plankton) productivity. He also has keen interests in (v) thermodynamic and statistical modelling of tropical cyclone genesis and intensity, and (vi) climate and vector-borne disease.  He enjoys both observational oceanography and numerical modelling. On the modelling side, he primarily dabbles in simple to intermediate complexity ocean dynamic, thermodynamic and ecosystem models.

Colin Packham is an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute (London).

Until he retired at the end of 1998, Colin was Product Manager, Property for Swiss Reinsurance Co, Sydney. In this and his previous role as Underwriting Manager of Mercantile & General Reinsurance Co of Australia, he was particularly active in the areas of Natural Perils underwriting, Crop Reinsurance, and Reinsurance Training. He was lecturer in Reinsurance at the University of Technology, Sydney from 1991 to 1994.

He is author of various publications on Natural Perils, Reinsurance and Crop Insurance. In 2000, “Natural Perils in Australia and New Zealand”, was published by Swiss Re, written by Russell Blong, David Sinai of Swiss Re, and Colin. This is a completely revised and expanded work following “Natural Perils in Australia, a Reinsurer’s Perspective”, published by Mercantile & General in 1991, written by John Woodward and Colin.

As an associate of Risk Frontiers, Colin is able to give advice to the team on the way reinsurers approach the pricing of natural perils, insurance industry practice regarding PML assessment, as well as crop hail insurance and reinsurance.

Andrew Gissing is a flood management specialist with the NSW State Emergency Service, responsible for the preparation of flood emergency management plans.

Andrew is a former student of the centre and holds a Masters (Honours) degree in Science and a Bachelors degree in Economics. His thesis, completed in 2002, evaluated various aspects of the Kempsey 2001 flood, including commercial flood damage, flood warnings and business continuity planning.

His current interests include flood damage estimation, emergency management, flood warning, disaster review methodology, tsunami, storm surge, dam failure and geographic information systems.

Dr Lisa Hall holds a PhD from Oxford University (1999-2003), specializing in the geology and neotectonics of New Zealand. Prior to this research, she completed a MSc in geophysics from Cambridge University.

Lisa has worked as a catastrophe risk modeler for three years, during which time she has been based both at Risk Frontiers, in Sydney and Risk Management Solutions, in California. She has experience developing earthquake risk models for insurance risk in a range of countries and tectonic environments, including Australia, Canada, Chile and the United States. She has also been involved with post-disaster loss assessment studies in both Australia and the U.S. (post-Hurricane Katrina).

George R Walker ME PhD FIEAust FIPENZ FAIB began his academic life studying civil engineering at what is now the University of Auckland . This was followed by an ME and a PhD at the same university. His PhD, awarded in 1966, was the first by a New Zealand university in Earthquake Engineering. It set the pattern for a life specialising in the effects of disasters. In 1968 he joined what is now James Cook University in Townsville, and after experiencing Cyclone Althea in Townsville in 1971, began his studies in Wind Engineering with a particular focus on the performance of houses in tropical cyclones. Following the devastation of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day 1974 he led the investigation of damage commissioned by the Australian Government on which the reconstruction of Darwin was based. In 1976 he became an Associate Professor and over the next 15 years or so played a major role in the development of wind resistant building standards in Australia. In 1989 he resigned from the University to become Assistant Chief of the CSIRO Division of Building Construction and Engineering, in charge of their North Ryde laboratory, and in 1994 joined what is now Aon Re Australia as Head of Strategic Development.

In the early 1980's George became involved in the estimation of PML's for the reinsurance industry, and while at CSIRO played a key role in the development for Suncorp of one of Australia's first catastrophe loss models. This led to his move to Aon where until his recent retirement from full-time work he has played a major role in the development and application of reinsurance related catastrophe insurance loss modelling expertise in Australia and New Zealand. This work has led to international recognition as a leader in the field of disaster insurance.

Colin Wastell has been involved in research into psychologically traumatised groups for nearly 20 years.  A key interest is the critical role of emotion in both the experience of trauma and recovery amongst diverse populations including emergency services personnel, psychological therapists and military veterans and serving personnel. Colin has also been interested in the mental processes that occur in response to traumatic situations including man-made and natural disasters and is currently conducting research into human reasoning and decision making. Colin is a member of the Psychology Department as well as being an associate of Risk Frontiers and the Macquarie University Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism.

Chas Keys became an associate of Risk Frontiers after a 14-year career with the NSW State Emergency Service (seven of them as Deputy Director General) and a further three years writing about emergency management. Trained as a social scientist, he holds a BA and an MA from the University of Auckland and a PhD from the University of Alberta.

His principal interest in the hazards field is in the management of flooding. His research has encompassed flood mitigation and floodplain management, planning for the management of flooding, the development of flood warning systems, flood response management and the education of members of flood liable communities about the hazard and what people can do to manage it in their own interests. He is also interested in the analysis of human vulnerability to disaster and in storm damage response operations. In recent times he has written books on the development of the State Emergency Service and on the evolution of flood and floodplain management in New South Wales, and he has published widely on emergency management themes in trade and other journals.

Dr Stephen Yeo works at a specialised floodplain management consultancy, Bewsher Consulting, in Sydney. His responsibilities include flood risk assessments and the preparation of floodplain management studies throughout NSW.

Stephen is a graduate of Risk Frontiers, gaining his doctorate for his investigation of flood damage patterns in the Ba River Valley in Fiji. He has also worked in the South Pacific as a disaster mitigation adviser with the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC).

Stephen has lectured in natural hazards, climate change and fluvial geomorphology (the topic of his Honours thesis) at Macquarie University, the University of Wollongong, the University of Sydney and the University of the South Pacific.

Stephen has also completed a Masters of Divinity with the Australian College of Theology.

Andy Pitman is co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at
UNSW. He has research interests in climate change, climate modelling and what can trigger abrupt changes in the climate. His main expertise
is terrestrial processes including how changes at the Earth's surface
affects regional and global climates.

He has worked recently on climate model evaluation, changes in
temperature and rainfall extremes, and the impact of land cover change on global climate. He was a lead author on the IPCC, is a member
of the IGBP, is a member of the National Committee for Earth System
Science and he convenes the ARC Research Network for Earth System Science.