1. Expansion and further development of the Thresholds Database, with the aim of developing a typology of thresholds in different systems. More broadly, the expanded database is intended to provide an empirical resource on documented and proposed thresholds for research projects within and outside the Resilience Centre.

2. Better assessment of uncertainty and potential surprises in social-ecological systems, both through quantitative techniques (e.g., estimation of “fat-tailed distributions" using Bayesian approaches) and qualitative techniques (e.g. scenario planning approaches).

3. Governance and management approaches that better account for thresholds in social-ecological systems. This work is being done in collaboration with researchers in the Adaptive Governance theme of the Resilience Centre, as well as researchers in South Africa.
 
Dr Biggs completed her PhD studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in August 2008. Her thesis Uncertainty, learning and innovation in ecosystem management included the use of Hierarchical Bayesian Models to show how uncertainties about the nature of ecological relationships may be highlighted by integrating results from multiple studies.

Another aspect of her dissertation work focused on the question of whether regime shifts can be detected (through approaches such as increasing variance) with sufficient lead time to change management in ways that avert undesirable regime shifts. It turns out that detecting and averting regime shifts may be possible where the underlying driver of the shift can be rapidly manipulated (e.g., as in angling-driven regime shifts), but is less likely where the regime shift driver can only be gradually manipulated (e.g., as in regime shifts driven by changes in shoreline habitat).
 
Prior to her PhD studies, Dr Biggs spent four years at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria, South Africa, working on the Southern African Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. She was particularly involved in the scenario planning aspects of the assessment, as well as issues of cross-scale links, and the assessment of biodiversity. Her Masters thesis, which was tied to the Millennium Assessment, involved the development of a new policy-relevant indicator for assessing biodiversity condition, namely the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII).

The BII has been used to explore the relationship of biodiversity condition to economic development in South Africa over the 20th century, and the possible trajectories of biodiversity change in southern Africa over the 21st century under the different global scenarios developed by the Millennium Assessment.
 
Dr Biggs has authored or co- authored over 15 scientific articles and 10 book chapters.