DoctorTom Robinson

I'm a Senior Lecturer Above the Bar in Disaster Risk & Resilience and the Science Lead for the AF8 (Alpine Fault Magnitude 8) programme. My work focuses on understanding and modelling disaster risk as something dynamic — recognising that hazard, exposure, and vulnerability all change over time, often in ways our current risk models don't fully capture.

My current research explores this dynamic risk across five interconnected areas:

1) how population movement affects exposure to hazards;

2) how landslide behaviour changes chronically in the years following an earthquake;

3) how sequences of compounding hazards shape long-term recovery;

4) how impacts vary across different disaster scenarios; and

5) how climate change is altering future earthquake and landslide risk.

Over the past decade, I've worked to develop scenario and ensemble-style modelling approaches that give governments, emergency managers, and the UN more realistic ways to plan for major disasters — work that has informed both national and international disaster risk reduction policy. I lead the Risk Science Group for the Aotearoa Earthquake Science Advisory Panel, sit on the Severe Weather Science Advisory Panel, and am a Programme Area Lead for QuakeCoRE's Disciplinary Theme 1.

My research has been published in journals including Nature Communications and PNAS, and has featured in international media from the Associated Press to CNN. I place a strong emphasis on communicating risk clearly to different audiences — from public talks as part of the AF8 roadshow, to briefings for local and central government, through to regular media commentary following major disaster events both in New Zealand and overseas. I'm always keen to collaborate with researchers, agencies, and communities working to build a more resilient Aotearoa.