PhD project: Assessment Framework for the Evaluation of Wildfire Risk Reduction Strategies
Nicolás’s PhD project is an attempt to combine research and practice from diverse areas with the purpose of developing an integrated assessment framework that will allow practitioners to objectively evaluate the smoke health impacts that wildfire risk reduction strategies impose on society and the environment. In particular, he will seek to introduce economic assessments such as cost-benefit analysis which will be used to quantify the likely health impacts in monetary terms ($AUD) and to construct various economic metrics that may be used to better inform fire management policy.
Nicolás is a PhD Candidate in Medical Sciences at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research from the University of Tasmania. His research interests involve the application of engineering-type tools, economics, and modelling to policy-related environmental and energy problems. During his PhD, he will introduce health impact and economic assessments into the evaluation of wildfire risk reduction strategies. Nicolás comes from Chile where he completed his undergraduate studies as an Industrial Engineer with a Diploma in Environmental Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. After working several years as an environmental and sustainability consultant, he completed a Master of Environment at the University of Melbourne in Australia. On his return to Chile in 2014 he worked as an environmental data analyst at the Environmental Enforcement Agency, where he gained better knowledge about environmental regulations and the use of analytics tools for data manipulation and the assessment of environmental compliance. With more than ten years of working experience in areas such as air quality and human health impacts, public policy, public health, environmental regulations and analytics, decision-support systems, Nicolás looks forward to merging this knowledge into applicable tools and frameworks that will contribute to improve human wellbeing.
