Silvia Serrao-Neumann

Associate Professor Silvia Serrao-Neumann is the convenor for the Environmental Planning Programme. She is co-leading a team of researchers in the MBIE Endeavour project 'Reducing flood inundation hazard and risk across Aotearoa-New Zealand' ($15.5m, 2020-2025). She is also a partner investigator in the Australian Research Council Discovery (DP160103371) “Managing environmental change through planning for transformative pathways” (AU$581,000), and in the BIOTA SYNTHESIS - Nucleus of Analysis and Synthesis of Nature-Based Solutions (FAPESP 2020-2025). She is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Cities Research Institute, Griffith University, Australia.

Before joining The University of Waikato she was a Senior Research Fellow for the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities at the Cities Research Institute, Griffith University, Australia. Her association with the CRC-WSC involved the investigation of catchment scale landscape planning for water sensitive city-regions in light of climate change. Since 2009 she has participated in many interdisciplinary research projects relating to climate change adaptation, including the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQ-CARI), a 3-year multi-sectoral study of climate change adaptation in South East Queensland, focusing on the sectors of urban planning and management, coastal management, physical infrastructure, emergency management and human health; and the Climate Change Adaptation for Natural Resource Management in East Coast Australia.

Her research also focuses on community planning for disaster recovery and resilience, scenario planning, and action/ intervention research applied to planning for climate change adaptation.

She has published widely on topics related to water resource management, climate change adaptation, and urban and regional planning.