Norman Shippee joins RSI

RSI is pleased to announce that Norman Shippee recently joined the team as a Climate and Applications Specialist.

Dr. Shippee earned his PhD at the University of Victoria. He is an experienced researcher who has focused on establishing stakeholder-defined storm metrics to facilitate safe operations in the marine transportation field. Dr. Shippee has previously provided services to RSI to conduct multiple end-user interviews with provincially owned hydrometric and meteorological network operators to collect station level metadata for the first phase of the Environment and Climate Change Canada Network of Networks. Dr. Shippee has also played a role in the Durham PIEVC assessment and helped develop temperature and precipitation relationships in RSI’s Climate Change Hazards Information Portal (CCHIP). Dr. Shippee’s PhD research linked both the physical and human fields by engaging stakeholders through surveys and using the input to develop metrics that bridge meteorological storm definitions and the needs of end-users. Through consultations with private industry and experienced marine operators, stakeholder perspectives on impactful weather have been determined using an array of survey options, including in-person interviews (both one-on-one and group interviews) and written survey questions. Answers from interviews have directly informed the development of different metrics for defining impactful weather using various reanalysis datasets and observational data. This project has required for creation of data collection protocols and database management, along with computer programming techniques for data acquisition and analysis. Dr. Shippee’s previous research efforts have involved performing quality control and usability checks on large, high-resolution datasets and working with multiple types of meteorological and hydrological data (satellite, radar, upper air and surface observations, tidal gauges).