Nicola is a Principal Scientist at Earth Sciences New Zealand with over 30 years of experience in earthquake geology and tectonic geomorphology. She has worked in the It’s Our Fault programme periodically since it started in 2006 and has been the science leader since 2021. Nicola's research includes studying raised beaches to understand past and future Hikurangi subduction zone earthquakes, and mapping and characterising active faults for land-use planning purposes and seismic hazard.
Edith is a Natural Hazard Planner at GNS Science with a background in local government policy development and resource management consenting. She is an accredited RMA Independent Commissioner. Based on the West Coast, she has a passion for physical geography and natural hazards. She also brings experience in civil defence response. Her work at Earth Sciences New Zealand is focused on facilitating science to land use planning practice. This aim is to improve planning practice for the management of natural hazards to reduce risk and support the resilience of our communities.
Finn is a Senior Risk Scientist at Earth Sciences New Zealand with over 10 years of experience in developing models for assessing the societal impacts from natural hazards. He specialises in developing models that evaluate aspects of future events that are understudied yet critical for planning and response decision-making. He has a particular interest in household responses to disruptive events, through development of the Stay-or-Relocate Model (STORM) to estimate household impacts and population displacement, and associated quantitative social science to inform the model. Finn was first involved with It’s Our Fault through modelling of fire following earthquake risk for Wellington City.
Genevieve Coffey is a paleoseismologist at Earth Sciences New Zealand who has a background in applying structural geology and geochemical tools to understand earthquake behaviour. Growing up in the lower North Island, she has always had an interest in how earthquakes shape New Zealand’s landscape, and this led her to study earthquakes and faulting in a variety of environments both in New Zealand and overseas. Genevieve leads the Active Fault Paleoseismology project looking at second order faults within the Central Wairarapa. This work continues on from the previous year's project where two paleoseismic trenches were excavated across the Masterton Fault and the Papawai Fault and will look to analyse the information gathered from the trench work.