Enhancing Indonesia's Disaster Preparedness Through an Innovative Multi-Risk Management Framework with ICT ecosystems

Indonesia stretches along one of the most tectonically active boundaries in the world. Since 1970, earthquakes in Indonesia have led to over US$20 billion in economic losses and to hundreds of thousands of fatalities, sadly, many preventable with a better understanding of earthquake risk. Seismic risk increases over time and is exacerbated by rapid population growth and urbanisation. One of the greatest risks arises from substandard vulnerable structures, which account for a large proportion of fatalities and comprise most of existing building stock in urban and suburban regions of West Sumatra. Particularly in Padang city, such substandard structures are highly vulnerable and experienced catastrophic collapses during the 2009 West Sumatra earthquake. Whilst the Indonesian government has made some progress towards meeting the objectives set in the UN' Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the risk of vulnerable structures in West Sumatra (one of the least developed areas in Indonesia) remains very high. As a result, there is an urgent need for better disaster preparedness, reliable vulnerability assessments and appropriate seismic risk management strategies to reduce potential losses in future earthquakes.

In recent years, Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have been proposed to enhance the quality of data and accuracy of seismic risk calculations. Field data from building images (i.e. building categories, geo-tag location) obtained from deep learning approaches can be used to calculate the empirical vulnerability of buildings, but such information is only useful if it is calibrated with real data and integrated into earthquake risk assessment frameworks. Social media can also provide large amounts of eyewitness data (e.g. video and images) about an earthquake but harnessing this data into useful information for emergency responders, search and rescue workers, and structural engineers is still a challenge and requires the use of big data and artificial intelligence.

The aim of this project is to develop an innovative, rapid and efficient framework for multi-hazard seismic risk assessment with ICT ecosystems to enhance West Sumatra's disaster preparedness, using Padang city as a pilot case study. For the first time, the developed framework will consider the effect of earthquakes, tsunami, landslides and liquefaction. The methodology will be subsequently integrated into the innovative management system KERIS. The new framework and KERIS system are expected to support West Sumatra's Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) in coordinating Disaster Risk Reduction efforts and policies in West Sumatra. The collaboration brings together leading institutions of the UK (University of Warwick) and Indonesia (Unversitas Bung Hatta, Institut Teknologi Bandung, and BPBD) with expertise in the fields of structural engineering and ICT.

This collaborative project has the following Objectives.

1) Develop a rapid and efficient (on data management and computation) multi-hazard risk assessment methodology including data from ICT ecosystems using Padang as a pilot case study.


2) Propose innovative seismic risk mitigation and DRR management strategies, including a mobile app and the integration of the new framework into a new knowledge-management system (KERIS).

3) To organise workshops, seminars, networking events and visits between staff in the three universities so as to establish new long-term collaborations between them.

The outcomes of the proposed research will give stakeholders in West Sumatra innovative and efficient tools for disaster mitigation, which is expected to reduce earthquake-related losses and promote sustainable development in the region.