After completing my undergraduate degree, I feel that my knowledge of the impact of disasters on building

structures is still lacking because, during my undergraduate research, 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 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 two-storey buildings to collapse, 15
units of houses were heavily damaged and 5 units of mosques collapsed based on reports from the National
Disaster Management Agency of Indonesia. Turkiye also experienced a devastating earthquake in 2023 centered
near Gaziantep in south-central Turkiye which killed more than 53000 people and left over 3 million homeless.

The importance of a building's design by taking into account earthquake load factors for both private residential
and public buildings can avoid loss of life as well as state losses. This can be achieved if Indonesia and Turkey
begin to implement designs and regulations that require every construction project to conform to designs and
regulations regarding earthquake-resistant buildings. I believe Indonesia and Turkiye can face future earthquake
disasters more prepared by implementing designs and regulations that can be applied to the construction of
buildings in Indonesia as well as Turkey. Solely because of this reason, I choose Turkey as my destination to
continue my study in the Civil Engineering M.S program offered by Middle East Technical University (METU)
to conduct a further research at Earthquake Engineering Research Center (EERC) regarding the design of
earthquake-resistant buildings for my master’s degree in order to contribute to a sustainable environment in the
future for both Indonesia and Turkiye.

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
network during my master's degree in Turkiye, hopefully TDMRC can collaborate with Earthquake Engineering
Research Center (EERC) METU to conduct further researches together regarding disaster prevention and
management and also for EERC to participate in Aceh International Workshop and Expo on Sustainable
Tsunami Disaster Recovery (AIWEST-DR) which is an annual event held by TDMRC in collaboration with
International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDes) Tohoku University, Japan.