Projects
Our projects, while diverse in topic and context, have a shared requirement for innovative thinking and tailored and robust approaches. Below is a selection of some of our recent or current projects.
Resilience to Nature’s Challenges National Science Challenge
Resilience to Nature’s Challenges is one of the government’s 11 National Science Challenges set up to tackle the biggest science-based issues and opportunities facing New Zealand. A key feature of the Science Challenges is collaboration across disciplines, institutions and borders. Within the current investment round, team members from M.E Research are participating particularly within the Resilience Challenge’s Multihazard Risk Model science programme. The aim of this programme is to deliver world-leading multi-hazard risk and impact modelling that contributes to key strategic, planning and decision-making processes. The programme’s case study will focus on linking a mix of computational, graphical and statistical approaches to provide hazard-through-to impact modelling of overlapping or cascading events (e.g. rainstorms, sediment build-up, landslides, volcanic ashfall) as might be initiated by a volcanic eruption near Tarawera, Rotorua.
Transitioning Taranaki to a Volcanic Future
This five-year MBIE Endeavour Fund project aims to build and test the geological, engineering and socioeconomic knowledge essential for New Zealand’s transition through an unprecedented level of on-going disruption that could result from long-term eruptions from Mt. Taranaki. Using a novel integration of volcanic scientific knowledge, experimentation and advanced mathematical and economic simulation, the project collaborators aim to radically cut down uncertainty that hinders decisive hazard and mitigation planning for transitioning to a new state of ongoing hazard. The research team will demonstrate how robust decisions can be made across space, through time, for multiple stakeholders. In this way we will also discover how to transform New Zealand in the face of continuous change.
The Southland Economic Project
The Southland Economic Project, initiated by Environment Southland Regional Council, is focused on the development of tools to help us understand the impacts of achieving environmental ‘limits’ as set under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. Working in collaboration with the project’s technical advisory group, which consists of members from DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb, Department of Conservation, Ministry for the Environment, Te Ao Mārama, Deer Industry New Zealand and others, M.E’s is responsible for the development of the Southland Economic Model. This model will help the community to understand possible economic impacts of freshwater management options by testing and simulating a range of ‘what if’ scenarios. The model is multi-sectoral, multi-regional, and simulates 20-year transition pathways, drawing on data and models created by other experts within the project team. See here for further information about the Southland Economic Project.
COVID-19 Network Contagion Modelling
The project involves developing a state-of-the-art, detailed, network-based model of contagion spread representing all ~5 million people in Aotearoa NZ, to support the government’s COVID-19 response and planning. This model takes advantage of the country’s unique asset of highly detailed linked microdata, available through the Statistics New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), to represent the Aoteoroa population and their interactions. This is combined with a stochastic, individual-based contagion model that incorporates the dynamics of COVID infection and disease progression, along with testing, contact tracing, isolation, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). This work has been funded through various sources including Te Pūnaha Matatini, MBIE, and Health Research Council grants. The core modelling team has worked with a wide range of collaborators, stakeholders and end-users including central government, public health researchers, and other infectious disease experts.