We caught up with Environmental Monitoring Team Lead Peter Hancock on preparing for drought conditions in summer 2023. Watch the video below for more information or read on to find out more about the exciting work Peter and his team do every day.
Meet Environmental Monitoring Team Lead Peter Hancock
What is your role and what does it involve?
I work in the Environmental Monitoring team. Our main role is to collect data to better understand the environment of our region. This data is then used as an evidence base to inform the environmental management feedback loop. Without this evidence, you don’t know if your policies and plans are working. Environmental protection and sustainability are some of the core values central to our team – they’re deep values that drive and motivate us (guardians of our community’s future). We’re only on earth for a temporary period of time, so we’ve all got kaitiaki responsibilities to leave our environments in a good state for our future generations.
What do you enjoy about it and what are some of the challenges you face?
I enjoy working with motivated and knowledgeable team members towards shared outcomes. I enjoy continual improvement, always finding new ways to tweak and improve things; making things better, solving problems. I enjoy the new innovative techniques and emerging technologies we can use to better understand our environment and the world around us. There’s lots of diversity in the role as well given Gisborne District Council’s unitary authority function and because of this we interact with a few different parts of Council. I enjoy learning about everyone’s respective challenges, responsibilities and pressure points. Makes me feel like we’re all working hard for our community.
My role has lots of variety and I enjoy that of the job. This week my workmate was showing me some amazing things he’d been doing measuring rivers using a drone. I had a look at tiny creatures under a microscope that were turning a local river a green in colour. I was curious; What are these green things? Is this an algae bloom? What causes algae blooms? Are they dangerous for humans? What about dogs? Is there anything we can and should do about them? It triggered so many questions for me.
Something else I enjoy being part of a legacy. We administer a significant dataset, with some of the earliest environmental measurements going back to the late 1800’s. Being able to look backwards enables us to better manage forwards. This data becomes more insightful the older it gets. On that, big data is one of our modern day challenges (last year we collected 41 million data points). Being able to tell a story using datasets that are too big for Microsoft Excel to handle, so you need specialist databases and analysis tools to help you make sense of it all. So would say one of our biggest challenges is turning the data we collect into useable and informative information and insights. This is where one of our biggest improvement opportunities lie.
How do you spend your down time outside of work?
The outdoors, managing our hobby beehive, gardens, adventuring and exploring. I’ve been doing a lot of cycling this year, keeping fit by training and riding with the Gisborne Cycling Club. I’ve entered in the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge event for the 26th time this year, where I aim to beat my best time of 4hr 12min. It’s an excuse to get out in the fresh air and keep fit. My wife has also also got us into lawn bowls and pickleball this year which is good fun, and the kids enjoy it too.