Webinar: Multi-hazard Data for local government, planners, consultants and community practitioners

Aotearoa New Zealand is significantly exposed to natural hazards and a changing climate. To build resilience to these challenges, local government, planners, engineers, and communities need to work together on risk reduction solution, informed by reliable, usable and accessible data.

Over the last 18 months, the Natural Hazards and Resilience Platform (the Platform) has funded projects aimed at helping us better understand how exposure to multiple hazards varies across the country. Come along to this webinar to hear about:

• New nationally consistent datasets and assessment approaches that enable users to better understand exposure across multiple hazards and support more informed planning, investment and resilience decision-making.  
• A practical framework for identifying locations where beaches are narrowing and shores are retreating that can be used in future coastal change and adaptation research.
• A database of historic significant flood events that compile event information, inundation maps, model outputs and associated datasets, including Cyclone Gabrielle (2023); Cyclone Debbie (April 2017); Nelson/Tasman (June 2025, July 2025, August 2025); Northland/Waikato/Te Araroa (January 2026); Northland (March 2026).

The webinar will finish with information on how this work will continue throughout the life of the Platform in the Next Generation Risk Assessment research theme.

Speakers

Liam Wotherspoon is a Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at The University of Auckland. He is involved in engineering research across a range of natural hazards, with a particular focus on Aotearoa New Zealand’s infrastructure networks. Liam leads the Platform’s Next Generation Risk Assessment theme. He is a Fellow of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering and is on the leadership team of Te Hiranga Rū QuakeCoRE. Liam was heavily involved in post-event response and research during the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence, the Kaikōura earthquake and Cyclone Gabrielle. Liam co-led the Built Environment programme in the Resilience to Nature’s Challenges National Science Challenge.

Amelia Lin is an Honorary Academic with the University of Auckland. Her PhD focused on adapting global geospatial models for Aotearoa New Zealand conditions and evaluating their ability to predict areas exposed to liquefaction manifestation and earthquake-induced landslides. Building on this foundation, her postdoctoral research integrated natural hazard models developed by other researchers to provide a better understanding of the combined exposure of multiple hazards across the country.

Catriona Thompson is currently contracting to Seascape Ocean Monitoring in Auckland. She recently finished her PhD in Geography at the University of Auckland on wave impact kinamtics on coastal cliffs. Her research interests include nearshore wave dynamics and coastal geomophology, coastal change and response to sea level rise and climate change, coastal cliff evolution, and remote sensing.  

Joë Pelmard is a research and teaching fellow at the University of Auckland in the Faculty of Engineering and Design. He is a hydro and aerodynamics expert who has worked on modelling pluvial and fluvial flooding across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Background

The Natural Hazards and Resilience Platform is a multi-institutional, collaborative research programme with a mission to accelerate our resilience to natural hazards. With funding for seven years from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, we’re mobilising scientists, resources, agencies and communities from around the country to collectively innovate to address this challenge.

Eleven Capability Retention Grant projects were funded in 2025. These grants were designed to retain essential capability in the natural hazards and resilience research system and make progress on priority work during the Platform’s establishment phase. The projects all support students, post-doctoral positions and other early career researchers.