I have lived, worked and studied in Durham for 6 years, completing my MSc in Risk and Environmental Hazards at the Institute of Hazard Risk and Resilience, at the Geography department in Durham in September 2014. During that course, I really enjoyed the opportunity to explore ways in which remote sensing and big data technologies can be used in predicting, responding to and mitigating against environmental hazards, in particular landslides and flooding.

My PhD explores an aspect of this: namely, how can the next generation of satellite synthetic aperture radar systems can be used to monitor soil moisture, which is a primary control of landslide and flooding hazards. Over the next few years I will be combining field studies and computer modelling to develop techniques for soil moisture monitoring using polarimetric synthetic aperture RADAR (SAR), and undertake a timeseries analysis of soil moisture and landslide relationships.