Food and Environment Research Agency
The researchers at Defra’s Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA) work across two research groups: risk analysis, and agri-environment and land use strategy. They are led by John Paul Gosling and include Nigel Boatman, Jill Johnson and Weiqi Luo. The team at FERA are coordinating and providing the expertise for one of the projects use-cases, WP5: land-use response to climatic and economic change. Also, the team’s statisticians are providing expert advice on some of the tools being developed in WP3.
Jill Johnson
Jill Johnson is responsible for WP5 in UncertWeb. She is a research statistician at the Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA). Jill has a background in extreme value theory and the spatial modelling of environmental processes through her PhD work at Newcastle University. For UncertWeb, Jill has played a large role in identifying and collating the different models and data sets to be used in the WP5 land use model chain. She is now focusing on the implementation of these models within UncertWeb, using the tools and web services developed in the project. Jill has expertise in emulation techniques and will also contribute to the use of emulation within the case study of WP5.
Sarah Knight
Sarah Knight is the Geographical Information (GI) Scientist at FERA. She is a geographer and her background is in biogeography, ecology, species distribution modelling and estimating risk under future climate change. She specialises in the use of GI in terrestrial environmental research and supports GI activities at FERA and more widely in Defra. In UncertWeb, Sarah collates and processes large data sets that feed into the land use model chain in WP5.
John Paul Gosling
Dr John Paul Gosling was responsible for WP5 in UncertWeb until August 2012. He is a subjectivist statistician by training and has been involved in Defra-funded projects that focus on changes to land-use and farming practices under climatic and economic change. He also has expertise in the elicitation of beliefs and in the use of emulation techniques. In WP3, he advised on the development of tools for formal expert elicitation to be used within UncertWeb. In Aug 2012 John Paul left FERA and direct involvement with the UncertWeb Project to take up a lectureship at Leeds University. He maintains his interest in UncertWeb and is now on the advisory board of the Project.