Since childhood, I have been a curious person.

Often after school I would discuss or chat with my father about

things that I didn't fully understand when I was at school. As always, my father could always satisfy my
curiosity, no matter what the question was as if my father had already experienced what I was experiencing. I
come from a family that lives in Banda Aceh City, far enough from the coast that our house was only inundated
with 1 meter of water during the 2004 Tsunami. At the time of the tsunami, I was in Malaysia and studied there
for a few years because my father was pursuing his doctorate in Malaysia. In 2006, two years after the tsunami,
my family and I returned to Aceh. For several months after returning to Aceh, I often saw news and pictures in
the newspapers about the Rahmatullah Mosque in the Lhoknga sub-district - an area quite close to the coast -
which was not damaged even though the surrounding buildings and trees were swept away by the tsunami waves
and the Baiturrahman Banda Aceh Mosque in Baiturrahman sub-district which also experienced more or less the
same thing. I asked my father and friends about this and the answers were scientifically unsatisfactory and I
believe that that was simply the will of God Almighty.

Aceh annually commemorates the 2004 Aceh Tsunami on 26 December with banners and posters that generally
use images such as the Rahmatullah Mosque and Baiturrahman Mosque during the tsunami. As time went on,
until I entered high school, the image again raised questions for me. I still believed it was the will of the
Almighty and at the same time, I also believed that God works in a way that can be understood by the human
mind so that humans can learn from these events, I believe that there is a logical explanation behind the
phenomenon. This is one of the reasons why I continued my higher education in the Civil Engineering program
at Syiah Kuala University (USK) Aceh in the hope that I could learn more about the structure of a building. 4
years later, right after I did my Internship, I decided to learn more about tsunamis and met one of my lecturers
who is also the Head of TDMRC (Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Research Center) to conduct a research and
write an undergraduate thesis on tsunami modeling. After a little discussion about tsunami modeling and his
research plan titled Sistem Pendukung Keputusan untuk Pembiayaan dan Asuransi Bencana Berbasis
Karateristik Ancaman (SupeRISKa) in collaboration with the RISPRO LPDP team, He agreed to supervise my
thesis on tsunami modeling in Aceh Province titled Fragility Analysis of Public Buildings Due to Potential
Tsunami Disasters in Aceh Province and I was also trusted to carry out tsunami modeling on Sumatra Island
which is part of his research, starting from the coast of Aceh Province to the coast of Lampung Province using
National DEM (DEMNAS) and National Bathymetry (BATNAS) data.

During my thesis research, I was also mentored by a research assistant and I often discussed with two doctoral
students under my supervisor about tsunami modeling and their respective research. After discussing with them,
I realized that no similar research has been done before on the impact of tsunami waves on structural damage of
buildings, so there is no reference method that I can use for my research. I realized that this kind of research is
relatively new in the TDMRC and decided to discuss further with my supervisor regarding the method that I will
use in my research, which can also be used by future students or researchers in the TDMRC who will conduct
further research on the impact of tsunamis on the structure of a building.

As a result, my supervisor and I agreed to use the fragility functions proposed by Shunichi Koshimura in 2009 in
his journal titled Developing Fragility Functions for Tsunami Damage Estimation Using Numerical Models and
Post-Tsunami Data from Banda Aceh, Indonesia. We agreed to use this equation because Shunichi Koshimura
developed this equation based on buildings that have relatively similar structures to the current buildings in
Banda Aceh, namely residential buildings with practical columns of brick walls (Confined Masonry) and
buildings with reinforced concrete structures. Using this method, I completed my research and thesis by
classifying public buildings in Aceh Province according to the possibility of damage caused by potential tsunami
waves to these buildings, including educational buildings, government offices, and health facilities.

After completing my undergraduate education, I felt that my knowledge of the impact of disasters on building
structures was still lacking because, during my research and thesis, I only explored the impact of tsunami waves
on building structures, excluding the impact of earthquakes on the structure of a building. The frequency of
earthquakes is more frequent than tsunamis. For example, Aceh itself still experienced several earthquakes after
the 2004 Aceh Tsunami disaster where the most severe was the earthquake that occurred in Pidie Jaya in 2016
which killed 25 people and 26 people were seriously injured and caused 72 units of shop houses (shop houses) to
collapse, 15 units of houses were heavily damaged and 5 units of mosques collapsed based on reports from the
National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB). Based on data from the Indonesian Disaster Information Data
(DIBI), Indonesia itself has experienced 336 earthquakes from 2009 to 2024 with the worst earthquake followed
by a tsunami occurring in 2018 in Central Sulawesi Province which claimed 2,256 victims and resulted in state
losses up to 13.82 trillion rupiah.
The importance of a building's design and application in the field by taking into account earthquake load factors
for both private residential buildings and public buildings can avoid loss of life as well as state losses. This can
be achieved if Indonesia begins to implement designs and regulations that require every construction project to
conform to designs and regulations regarding earthquake-resistant buildings. Although Indonesia already has
building safety regulations that refer to Law No. 28 of 2002 concerning buildings, Indonesia still needs to learn
from Japan, which has implemented designs and applications in housing and buildings in general to anticipate
disasters both tsunamis and earthquakes in the future. Japan itself has a history of revising regulations after every
earthquake, for example in 1971, Japan increased standards for reinforced concrete buildings (RC Structures)
after Japan was hit by an earthquake in 1968. Followed in 1981, Japan implemented new standards on anti-
seismic design after Miyagi Province experienced an earthquake in 1978 and Japan revised and strengthened
standards for buildings made of wood in 2000, following the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. As a result,
during the Tohoku Earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 in 2011, the Japanese skyscraper Tokyo Sky Tree
survived without damage because it was designed and constructed by the standards and regulations set by the
Japanese government.

Reflecting on Japan, I believe Indonesia can face future earthquake disasters more prepared by learning from
Japan about the design and regulations that can be applied to the construction of buildings in Indonesia as stated
by the former Secretary General of PUPR Anita Firmanti in 2019 at the annual agenda as a follow-up to the
Indonesia-Japan Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC), that in disaster mitigation, Indonesia also needs to learn
from Japan regarding the implementation of building safety policies so that they are earthquake resistant, she
believes that if these regulations are implemented properly, the number of buildings that collapse due to
earthquakes will continue to decrease. For this reason, I chose Japan as my destination to pursue a master's
degree in Earthquake Engineering offered by the Tokyo Institute of Technology and a master's degree program
in Infrastructural Engineering offered by the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tohoku
University. In addition to these two options, I chose a university outside of Japan, the University of Melbourne,
Australia. I chose the University of Melbourne as my third choice because in the Master of Engineering
Structures program there are courses Earthquake Resistant Design of Buildings and Extreme Loading and
Structural Resilience which aim to understand the structural principles of a building associated with extreme
events including one of them is an earthquake.

After completing my master's degree, I plan to continue my career as a lecturer at Syiah Kuala University (USK)
and become part of the researchers at TDMRC USK in the Disaster Resilient Infrastructure division. With the
knowledge I gained during my master's degree, I can work with the Aceh PUPR Office to assist the Aceh
Government in the future in proposing designs and formulating policies on the construction of buildings in Aceh
both private residential buildings and public buildings to be more resistant to disasters both earthquakes and
tsunamis. Based on the report of the Indonesia Development Review and Japan Cooperation: Past, Present and
Future, the Government of Japan through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), with the idea of
"Build Back Better”, in cooperation with the Government of Aceh is making efforts to strengthen disaster
management capacity and earthquake-resistant regional development. Along with this, I can also be an asset to
the Aceh Government that can contribute to Aceh in the future to build a better Aceh.