Ruby Coast Research Centre Team

Tord Kjellstrom: Medical doctor (PhD) and Master of Engineering, originally from Sweden, but now mostly based in New Zealand. Forty years experience of university teaching and research in environmental and occupational health, with a focus on epidemiology, has produced more than 400 publications on exposure and health impacts of different hazards. His current work deals mainly with the occupational health impacts of climate change in different parts of the world.

Bruno Lemke: A PhD in Physics and 20+ years teaching of Human Physiology at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology. This is an excellent background for researching heat stress that spans these two disciplines (plus others). His main role in the team is to do the early exploratory work to test out ideas using mainly the versatile spread sheet as a tool. If this early work produces worthwhile results, other members of the team pick up different aspects of the research either with GIS, the web or a database to develop these ideas further. He also does research on tools to measure heat stress and has developed a low cost (less than $100) heat stress meter based around the LASCAR data loggers. Recent work includes heat stress studies based on India, Australia, the USA and South East Asia. He has been involved in an extensive WHO report on “Global Assessment of the Health Impacts of Climate Change: Occupational Heat Stress”.

Chris Freyberg: MSc in Computer Science, BSc in Pure and Applied Mathematics. Chris started his career as a systems programmer and ended up in management. Now retired, he was previously Director of Information Technology (CIO) for Massey University, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Information Systems, and Associate Dean (Quality and Accreditation) of the College of Business. Chris's current interests include conservation, geophysics, wireless sensor networks, and for this team his role is bulk computation on climate model data.

David Briggs: Emeritus professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Imperial College London. A geographer and environmental scientist by background, he has researched extensively in the areas of GIS, exposure assessment, environmental modelling, and health impact analysis for policy support. He was a regular consultant to WHO, the European Commission and national government agencies, and has compiled state of environment reports amd environmental health indicators for the European Community, Scotland, local authorities and a range of government agencies NGOs and IGOs. He was a co-ordinator or principal investigator on more than 60 research council, EU and industry funded projects and has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers and ca. 20 books and research monographs/reports. He retired in July 2009, and now lives in Nelson, New Zealand. 

Olivia Hyatt: Completed her PhD (Geology) in 2010 into the nature of glacial processes operating through time in South Island, New Zealand.  Her experience in GIS, cartography and keen interest in the interaction of climate and natural processes, has lead to her current work on the impacts of climate change. This work includes developing the Climate CHIPS, with a particular focus on local climate change and its impacts. She lives in New Zealand.

Matthias Otto: Master of Engineering, originally from Germany, currently Senior Lecturer in the field of Information Communication Technology at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, New Zealand, with an emphasis on software development.  He is currently working on software solutions for the analysis and evaluation of climate data and its impact on human health.  Outputs from this software have been published and further publications are under development.

Lloyd Hasson: Bachelor of Science in Physics and Energy Studies and Graduate Diploma in Information Technology. He works at an engineering consultancy in Nelson, New Zealand as an Asset Information Specialist with four years' experience in software development and data analysis. He makes Android apps as a hobby and is currently assisting with further developments of the ClimateCHIP website, improving the user interface adding new features.
 
Ryan Clarke: Bachelor of Information and Technology, twelve years of experience as a lecturer at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, now working at XERO. His passion is for the application of Internet technologies to help people solve problems. Ryan was instrumental in setting up this website and is the original author of the Your Area pages, which use large data sets, mapping integration and other bespoke technologies.
 
Cactus Software Ltd: A local website hosting and support company located in Nelson, New Zealand, that has been supporting small businesses and NGOs in the region for decades.  After site hosting problems in terms of continuity, support and reliability became apparent, the kind and knowledgeable staff at Cactus have supported the team and this project on a voluntary basis for a successful migration to their hosting service.  In addition to what you see, Cactus is hosting a database with access for the affiliated researchers to all the data presented on this website and beyond.