Alastair Barnett is a civil engineer with over forty years of experience of computational studies of water flows in proposed or existing engineering projects in over twenty countries. As well as undertaking numerical model studies in harbours, hydropower channels, and drainage networks, he has set up many field monitoring programmes for model calibration and verification. He has developed a series of software packages for hydraulic analysis. The latest, AULOS, is used for real-time hydropower flow routing as well as urban drainage and tsunami inundation studies.

His research on computational hydraulics has attracted international recognition, as he has served as specialist reviewer for many technical conferences. He also peer reviews papers for research journals. In New Zealand his paper on tsunami studies for the Museum of New Zealand won the 1998 Fulton Downer Gold Medal, the highest technical award of the Institution of Professional Engineers (IPENZ).