Research activities and interests
Peter’s expertise has enabled him to develop and carry out research in different fields of environmental and quantitative geography as summarised below.
Urban climate
This work focuses on spatial and temporal modelling of urban climate to advance knowledge on the key underlying processes (and divers) as a means to explore relevant application areas and understand liveability (adaptation and mitigation) of cities. Understanding urban climate processes at a wide range of spatial (local, micro and meso) and temporal (diurnal, seasonal and multi-decadal) scales is crucial for this endeavour. A sample of work in progress on modelling ambient temperature is contained in this link. Another feature of this work is mapping the literature in understudied geographical regions and some work is currently being undertaken for sub-Saharan Africa.
Seaonality of vegetation in cities
In view of the fact that urban vegetation provides numerous beneifts for urban livelability through its provisioning and regulatory ecosystem services, knowing how vegetation might be affected by urbanisation and urban climate phenomena (urban heat island and urban dryness island effect) are features of interest for science and policy about management of green spaces. As part of his IPCC funded doctoral project, Peter combined remote sensing and field monitoring technics to study vegetation seasonality in response to urbanisation and urban climate in a tropical city context. This area of research is still of interest to Peter.
Sustainable healthy landscapes
Peter is also interested to advance knowledge about vegetations dynamics (seasonality) beyond the confines of cities and its implications for land productivity and food security in stressed environments. Some of this work will be carried out as part of the EO Africa project.
Sensor Technology
For his postdoctoral research in the Departmentof Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-information management (ITC, University of Twente), Peter worked in collaboration with Dr. Edwin Mugume of the College of Engineering at Makerere University to prototype a low cost weather station tailored for tropical developing context of African cities. This work is still ongoing as part of the collaborative work with netlabs, and would provide prospects for low cost monitoring of climate in cities.
Biodiversity
Peter has a keen interest in biodiversity and ecological research and has previously worked as part of the team on the Bwindi Gorilla Research project. His interests are focussed on the application of sensor technology and remote sensing for instance for habitat quality monitoring.
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