ITB Held International Workshop on Disaster

January 08, 2020 - ( update : 28-01-2020 )

By Adi Permana

Editor Adi Permana

BANDUNG, itb.ac.id – Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) held the 4th International Workshop on Multi-Hazard Early Warning and Resillience Building in Coastal Communities and Final CABARET Steering Committee Meeting on Monday (1/6/2020) at CRCS Building, ITB Ganesa Campus. The five-day workshop was attended by Minister of Bappenas/PPN Suharso Monoarfa, Rector of ITB Prof. Kadarsah Suryadi, Head of CABARET ITB Dr. Harkunti P. Rahayu and Prof. Richard Haigh from University of Huddersfield.

CABARET or Capacity Building in Asia for Resilience Education is a project funded by The European Union that aims to strengthen research and innovation capacity for improvement of community resilience towards disaster. The project will provide supports for building international and regional cooperation capacity between Higher Education in Asia (zone 6) and Europe.

“One of the project’s focus is to conduct research on the aspect of multi-hazard early warning (MHEW) and to improve disaster resilience of residences on coastal regions,” said Dr. Harkunti.

ITB also takes part on the project. Therefore, Harkunti expressed her thanks to ITB for the support in cooperating with 19 higher educations in Asia and Europe. She added that this activity and tied cooperation are expected to contribute to disaster mitigation in Indonesia, especially big cities in Indonesia.

The event contained knowledge and experience sharing from delegates of 19 institutions in Asia and Europe. Nine delegates came from higher education in Asia and seven from The European Union. Indonesia was represented by ITB and Universitas Andalas.

“This workshop is not the conclusion of our joint programs, but hopefully it can be a new collaboration in the future between higher education in Europe and Asia in the field of disaster mitigation and development of multi-hazard early warning system,” said this lecturer at School of Architecture, Planning, and Policy Development of ITB.

Prof. Richard Haigh as the lead researcher of CABARET said the aim of the project is to promote international cooperation in regional level between higher education in Asia and Europe, as well as to improve researches on multi-hazard early warning system and improve disaster resilience of residences on coastal regions.

On the same occasion, Rector of ITB Prof. Kadarsah Suryadi said that Indonesia is known as a country frequently hit by disasters such as tsunami, sea erosions, landslides, storms, and extreme weathers. Until 2019, according to BNPB, there have been 3,721 disaster occurrences in Indonesia. “Even early this year, flood occurred in Jakarta,” he said.

Natural disasters that can occur to Indonesia is a challenge for ITB and become the basic of research agenda in ITB. Regarding that, ITB has designed advance technologies to tackle varying disaster problems and challenges. “It is in accordance with Three Pillars of Higher Education, namely education, research, and community service,” he said.

The rector said ITB has made contribution to disaster mitigation by building the Research Centre for Disaster Mitigation (PPMB).

Minister Suharso Monoarfa said the workshop is relevant with the situation and condition of Indonesia. As previously known, early this year Jakarta was hit by flood. “According to BMKG, the rain intensity in Jakarta reaches 33mm/day, the highest since 2007,” he said.

Therefore, he said, we have to be aware that Indonesia is a country with frequent, sudden natural disasters. Indonesia is also known as Ring of Fire which is surrounded by active volcanoes. “We have to admit that disasters might occur because of human activities such as deforestation, urban development, and illegal mining which cause landslides and climate change,” he said.