Dr Rob Bell

Rob has been involved for 38 years in diverse areas of coastal engineering, coastal/shelf physical oceanography, natural physical hazards, risk assessment, water quality, wastewater discharges and climate-change impacts and adaptation. His expertise includes numerical modelling (hydrodynamic flows, discharges and sediment transport), coastal and estuarine oceanography, natural hazard and risk assessments, coastal climate-change and sea-level rise guidance, assessment of environmental effects (AEE's) for coastal roading projects, port developments, dredging and sand-extraction impacts, wastewater discharges and the design of monitoring programmes.

Rob also interfaces with coastal policy and planning. He was the Coordinating Lead Author of the 2017 Coastal Hazards and Climate Change guidance for local government published by the Ministry for the Environment and was a contributing author of the recent implementation guidance on the coastal hazard policies in the NZ Coastal Policy Statement, published by the Dept. of Conservation. He has acted as an expert witness at several Environment Court or Board of Inquiry hearings. Rob also regularly acts as a peer reviewer and has given numerous presentations to councillors, public groups and conferences and is in regular demand by the media on coastal processes, climate change and hazard/risk matters.

Rob has considerable experience in consultancies for coastal environmental impact studies and input to coastal engineering project design (including coastal roads and bridges, ocean outfalls, stormwater outlets, water quality monitoring, coastal hazards, ship-handling, harbour dredging and disposal, sand extraction, coastal reclamations and airport upgrade projects).

Rob is a certified Hearings Commissioner under the Making Good Decisions programme, chartered member of the Engineers NZ (CMEngNZ) and a Chartered Professional Engineer CPEng (Environmental Engineering).