The 2004 Sumatra earthquake was the most lethal natural disaster of modern times. Such a massive earthquake came as a surprise to earth scientists worldwide, who had grossly underestimated the earthquake potential in this part of the world. In order to address this gap in the science of Indonesian earthquakes, the Government of Australia supported a technical capacity-building program that brought Australian and Indonesian earthquake scientists together to focus not only on improved science, but also on cooperation among government and academia to effectively utilize the science to help Indonesian society protect itself from future earthquakes.
The major cause of fatalities in earthquakes is building collapse, so reduction of earthquake fatalities can be achieved through adoption of seismically resilient building practices that take into account the best available earthquake science via a seismic hazard map. Development of such a map for a tectonically active area like Indonesia is a major undertaking, and requires coordinating the efforts of geologists, seismologists, geodesists and geotechnical engineers. Moreover, knowledge of earthquakes is never complete, so a seismic hazard map is not a "one-off" but instead must be continually improved, and this requires education of a new generation of Indonesian scientists.
The Australian-Indonesian collaboration in earthquake science described here attempted to achieve all this, and resulted in not only production of a modern earthquake hazard map, but also laid the foundation for a sustainable path towards development of improved earthquake hazard and risk products that will support Indonesian earthquake disaster risk reduction into the future.
Phil R. Cummins received his PhD in Geophysics from U. California Berkeley in 1988, and worked as a postdoctoral and research fellow at the Australian National University (ANU) until 1996, when he moved to the Japan Center for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). After leading a geodynamics research unit at JAMSTEC, in 2001 he took up a position leading earthquake and tsunami hazard research at Geoscience Australia. In 2011, he accepted a joint appointment between Geoscience Australia and ANU as Prof. Natural Hazards, where he combines teaching and research in natural hazards at ANU with technical application of earthquake and tsunami science at Geoscience Australia.
This talk is presented as part of the Distinguished Geoscience Australia Lecturer series on 23 May 2018.
