May 19 – Water Management and the Environment:
How are the new, more accessible collaboration technologies such as Google Maps, Wikis and other Open Source solutions changing the way that water is managed, used and studied?
Speakers:
	Bernard Miville - NIWA
Bernard will discuss NIWA’s environmental forecasting system, mainly EcoConnect, and the potential impact of using NIWA forecasts in water resource management, flood preparation, and other weather hazards.

Bernard Miville is the Manager of Operational Forecasting at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Wellington. The work mainly consists of ensuring that the wheels run smoothly in the production of environmental forecasts and that new technical and scientific development projects are properly integrated into the operational setting. Bernard has an MSc in meteorology from McGill University and spent 15 years in Environment Canada as an operational weather and sea ice forecaster and scientific programmer. He also worked for 2 years as the data manager for the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) program which is part of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) (from the University of Victoria, Canada and the Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway). More recently Bernard worked for almost 3 years as the data manager for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) at the Japan office in Hokkaido University, Sapporo.
 	
	Dave Loubser – Ministry for the Environment
Dave will give a brief presentation on remote sensing in the environment.  This is of particular interest given the recent announcement of a $5 million deal with government agencies and local authorities with Digital Globe Quickbird Earth observation satellite to provide up-to-date high resolution digital images (compared with Google Earth images that can be years out of date).
In 2007, Dave was appointed Acting Director of the newly established New Zealand Geospatial Office.  The establishment of this office was a direct outcome of the New Zealand Geospatial Strategy, which recognized New Zealand’s increasing reliance on geospatial information for a wide range of activities, including emergency services, national defence, utilities, resource management, biosecurity and economic development. Dave has a wealth of experience in geographic information systems from his role at MfE (where he is Team Leader for Land Use and Carbon Analysis System Data Collection and Mapping) as well as his experience at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Timaru District Council and various public and private sector organisations in South Africa.
	
 	 Bryan Jenkins – ECan
Bryan will discuss an innovative use of environmental sensing for real-time resource management in Canterbury.
Dr Jenkins is currently Chief Executive of Environment Canterbury (ECan) and was appointed to that position in July 2003. Before taking up his current position, he was for seven years Chief Executive of the Department of Environmental Protection in Western Australia, and for two years was Professor of Environmental Management at Murdoch University.  He has had a long interest in managing sustainability with particular emphasis on bringing together science-based management and stakeholder involvement.
For his last five years in Canterbury, Dr Jenkins has worked extensively with the communities of the Canterbury Region, from the southern catchment of the Waitaki River through to the northern catchment of the Clarence River, well beyond Kaikoura. His work relating to water has involved working with communities to develop community-based catchment management plans; developing a strategy for storage options in Canterbury to be evaluated by a multi-stakeholder group in a sustainability framework; advancing processes for the protection of water quality and quantity; including the introduction of allocation limits to groundwater zones of the Canterbury Plains; improving the approaches to stormwater and diffuse source management; and the protection of water bodies and the management of water through regulatory and non-statutory processes.
	
Chair:
	Andrew Matthews – UNESCO (NZ) Natural Science Commissioner:
Andrew Matthews has a PhD in atmospheric physics from the University of Canterbury.  He has more than 30 years research experience in environmental science and sustainable management, including extended periods of work in Germany, France and Japan.  His direct research interests include environmental sustainability, climate change and ozone depletion chemistry.  He has published over 130 papers on these topics.  From 1983 until 2005 he was a research scientist, regional manager and then Manager International Services of New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, NIWA.  He has an active interest in challenges faced by small island states in the Pacific regarding climate change and sustainable development.  He is now the director of a private consulting business, AM-NZ Services.  From 1995 to 2001 he coordinated the New Zealand and German Science and Technology Agreement.  He currently Chairs the Science Planning Committee of the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), is a member of the Royal Society of New Zealand's Climate Committee and is the Natural Sciences Commissioner on the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO.