Contact Matheesha Liyana Arachchige
Areas of expertise
- Agrifood Systems
- Applied Informatics
- Carbon, Climate and Risk
- Environmental Impacts
- Environmental Defence
- Monitoring and Environmental Informatics
- Soil Resources
- Sustainable Land Systems
Background
Matheesha is the Data Systems Developer in soil informatics team with background in Forestry, Environmental Science, Carbon Management, Remote Sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS), Web Development and Data Science.
He holds a BSc (Special) Degree in Forestry and Environmental Science (University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka), MSc Carbon Management(University of Glasgow) and Postgraduate Diploma in Geographical Information Systems(University of Southampton).
Prior to joining Cranfield University, Matheesha spent five years working as a Systems Developer in Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) project for the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) who are part of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) under Cyient Europe Ltd.
He also spent more than 15 years in working on several academic, industrial and government institutions in Sri Lanka and United Kingdom on IT and environmental science projects.
Current activities
Develop new applications and/or products based on national spatial environmental datasets, that include soil, climate, and land data. Example projects include the incorporation of the latest UKCP18 climate predictions to ascertain how soil will respond to a changing climate.
Interacting with varied existing and new data clients to develop a wider range of products. These are developed in response to the challenges and opportunities identified by the different sectors that utilise national digital environmental data and are directly relevant for decision making in the UK Government and business.
The development and support of the digital infrastructure that is needed to interface national spatial environmental datasets with existing and new platforms. This includes the development of digital tools such as Application Program Interfaces (API’s) and structured and unstructured data platforms (cubes, data lakes).
Maintaining and upgrading LandIS website and tools.
Clients
- Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
- Insurance industry