Dr Lucia Danzi

Postdoctoral Fellow

Contact

Tel +64 3 479 9243
Email lucia.danzi@otago.ac.nz

Profile summary

Dr Lucia Danzi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Sustainability Research, working at the intersection of disaster risk and resilience and tourism management and sustainability. Using mixed methods and systems thinking, she studies the structure and dynamics of complex socio-economic systems, including tourist destinations, to strengthen societal resilience to multi-hazard risks.

She completed her PhD in Human Geography at the University of Otago (2024), developing a social network analysis framework for tourism–emergency management collaboration in disaster preparedness and response.

Her current research, funded by Ngā Ngaru Wakapuke and Te Pūnaha Matatini, uses Large Language Models to examine insurance systems in disaster recovery, tourism resilience to earthquake sequences, and the ethics of AI -assisted causal loop diagramming. Her work outputs span peer-reviewed publications in A-band international journals and policy contributions that have directly informed emergency management in Aotearoa New Zealand. She serves as Postgraduate Co-ordinator, QuakeCoRE Emerging Investigator, and Te Tira Maurikura committee member.

Current and recent research projects

Funded by Ngā Ngaru Wakapuke (March 2025–present)

• LLM -Assisted system dynamics modelling of the insurance system across earthquake sequences, with Professor Caroline Orchiston and Dr Garry McDonald (Market Economics)
• Tourism resilience to future earthquake sequences, with Professor Caroline Orchiston and Dr Garry McDonald (Market Economics)

Funded by Te Pūnaha Matatini (July 2026–present)

• Exploring the Ethical Implications of LLM-Generated Causal Loop Diagrams: Expert Perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand, with Professor Alex McMillan (Department of Public Health)

Funded by Resilience to Nature’s Challenges (2020–2024)

• Inter-organisational collaborative networks in Tourism disaster Management, with Professor Caroline Orchiston, Distinguished Professor James Higham (Griffith University), and Dr Rodolfo Baggio (Bocconi University)

Supervision

Masters supervision

• Corban Church (Master of Science, 2026), Risk tolerance in communities threatened by coastal hazards

Opportunities for supervision

Dr Danzi is open to co-supervise Postgraduate students with a research interest in the following broad areas:

• Disaster management and resilience in tourism contexts
• Inter-organisational collaboration and cross-sectoral governance
• Systems Thinking and Social Network Analysis in organisational contexts
• New technologies for Complex Systems Modelling, including Large Language Models