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Newsletter
Sponsoring Professional Memberships
Location: Indonesia, Pakistan
Time frame: 2008
The Problem
GHI’s Response
GHI is sponsoring three international colleagues — Febrin Anas Ismail, Sarosh Hashmat Lodi, and Din Muhammad Kakar — as members of the Seismological Society of America (SSA). As members, these professors receive the publications Seismological Research Letters and the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, have electronic access to past SSA publications and can connect to other SSA members through an online roster.
Febrin Anas Ismail, shown (seated) with students, is a professor of civil engineering at Andalas University in Padang, Indonesia. Professor Ismail assists the provincial government with earthquake and tsunami disaster management. He and his colleagues strive to change the Government’s focus from being a responsive one to being one of managing disaster by doing more mitigation activities. Professor Ismail explains, “We try to convince them that the cost of mitigation is only 1/60th of the cost of rehabilitation and reconstruction.”
Sarosh Hashmat Lodi, shown (at left in photo) with a colleague, is a professor of civil engineering at NED University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi, Pakistan. He has worked in the field of earthquake engineering for more than 20 years. Professor Lodi serves as a team leader in GHI’s current collaborative project, Earthquake Engineering Training and Curricula in Pakistan, with NED University and other institutions in Pakistan that train future engineers and architects.
Din Muhammad Kakar, Assistant Professor of Geology at the University of Balochistan in Quetta, Pakistan, brings 20 years of research in sedimentology to his more recent earthquake studies. Professor Kakar (at center in photo) led the field investigation of the M 6.2 October 29, 2008 earthquake in Ziarat, Pakistan. He stresses the urgent need for improved earthquake safety measures in the region, where “the peculiar geomorphology of Balochistan, its inaccessibility, low level of literacy, poverty, and ten-fold increase in population since 1935 has increased the potential threat to the existing built up environment of Quetta in particular and throughout Pakistan in general.”
The number of experts in earth science and earthquake engineering who live and work in developing countries is quite small. These professionals are often ill-equipped and isolated from contact with their colleagues based in industrialized nations. These men and woman need improved access to technical information and to the international network of earthquake risk management experts, in order to advance their efforts to improve earthquake safety in their regions.