Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Understanding and quantifying seismic risk in urban areas is critical to underpin policy designed to mitigate against future seismic losses and fatalities. This requires detailed knowledge of the earthquake hazard, the characterisation of assets in the built environment and its vulnerability to ground shaking.
In this research I have focused on the most populous island in the world, Java, Indonesia. With a population of 157 million it is home to over half of the country’s population, many of whom reside in some 27 million vulnerable masonry houses. Multidisciplinary data sources have been used to develop a nuanced and robust model of the built environment (exposure) at the island scale, identify the sources of uncertainty, and determine the sensitivity of seismic risk calculations to this uncertainty. This work has greatly advanced the understanding of seismic risk in Java and can be used to inform disaster risk reduction policy and management. The methods used in this study can be applied to other locations with low data availability in the Asia-Pacific.
0:00 - Introduction
2:10 - Seminar
Understanding and quantifying seismic risk in urban areas is critical to underpin policy designed to mitigate against future seismic losses and fatalities. This requires detailed knowledge of the earthquake hazard, the characterisation of assets in the built environment and its vulnerability to ground shaking.
In this research I have focused on the most populous island in the world, Java, Indonesia. With a population of 157 million it is home to over half of the country’s population, many of whom reside in some 27 million vulnerable masonry houses. Multidisciplinary data sources have been used to develop a nuanced and robust model of the built environment (exposure) at the island scale, identify the sources of uncertainty, and determine the sensitivity of seismic risk calculations to this uncertainty. This work has greatly advanced the understanding of seismic risk in Java and can be used to inform disaster risk reduction policy and management. The methods used in this study can be applied to other locations with low data availability in the Asia-Pacific.
0:00 - Introduction
2:10 - Seminar
