Meet Tim Beale: A day in the life of a RiskScape™ developer

What's something you do as part of your role that people might be surprised about?

Part of any successful software project is "building the right thing". You can't just throw software at a problem and hope for the best. So, I've had to learn a lot about risk modelling and understand all sorts of concepts, like log-normal CDF damage state curves and Occurrence Exceedance Probability (OEP).

An example of RiskScape displaying the results for a coastal flooding model.

A RiskScape™ model is made up of lots of little computational building blocks. We base these building blocks on well-established patterns used in other languages, like SQL and Python. It's quite satisfying when you add a new building block, and it's intuitive to use — and it suddenly becomes a lot simpler to build new models.

What’s a problem you’re currently working on?

Large probabilistic risk models are a headache. They can potentially involve billions of calculations, so trying to run that promptly (without needing a supercomputer) can get interesting. It often involves taking a step back, thinking about how data gets manipulated from start to finish, and figuring out smarter ways to shuffle the processing in the model.

A key part of keeping projects running smoothly is testing. RiskScape™ has a suite of automated tests to ensure we don't degrade the system, but a little targeted manual testing can go a long way.

What keeps you motivated?

Tim Beale at a training session on using RiskScape.

Sometimes working on risk models can feel a bit academic, just dealing with data files and numbers. But then a disaster hits, and I'm reminded just how exposed to natural hazards New Zealand is, and how expensive the recovery can be. It's important to have tools like RiskScape that can help us better understand our exposure to risk and how to best mitigate it.

What are you excited about for this year?

We've been concentrating on fleshing out the underlying RiskScape™ modelling functionality for a while. Now, one focus is on making RiskScape™ as simple as possible for risk modellers to use. When you're dealing with multi-hazard geospatial probabilistic risk models, that's quite the challenge. But if we do a good job of it, RiskScape™ will be a powerful research tool, not just in New Zealand, but globally. Working at Catalyst, with its commitment to open source solutions, and the flexible and friendly work, means I get to be part of that.

If you're interested in joining the team at Catalyst, check out our available positions.