I studied civil engineering and coastal engineering as my specialization, my focus is tsunami

and coastal hazards. As a freshgraduate, i am trying to improve my knowledge and practical

skills related to coastal disaster prevention and management. Previously, I did my
undergraduate thesis at Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Research Center (TDMRC) with the
title Fragility Analysis of Public Buildings Due to Potential Tsunami Disaster in Aceh
Province.
Tsunami and coastal hazard are a serious issue both for Indonesia and Australia as both these
countries have been affected by several tsunami disasters in the past years. In Indonesia, the
worst tsunami disaster occurred in Aceh Province in December 2004, which then followed by
Tsunami Nias that happened in Nias Islands in March 2005.
University of New South Wales (UNSW) has been studying and doing researches related to
tsunami hazards through Australian Tsunami Research Center & Natural Hazards Research
Laboratory (ATRC-NHRL) and also University of New South Wales provides coastal
engineering courses and has Water Research Laboratory with good facilities such as wave
flumes which would really help me improve my knowledge in coastal engineering.
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In the short term, I believe this study will increase my academic and research skills which
would help me have a profound understanding related to coastal engineering and coastal
hazards. With these skills, I hope i can sharpen my knowledge and conduct further researches
pertaining to my specialization.
In the long term, the goal is to be able to make coastal communities in Aceh and hopefully in
Indonesia to be more aware about the threat that is posed by coastal disaster so that any
further coastal disaster would be prevented or at least managed with less loss of lifes or
infrastructures.
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During my undergraduate thesis, fragility of public buildings was obtained by using tsunami
fragility equation with the inundation depth of the simulation of several tsunami scenarios as
the variable used in the equation. Previously, to determine fragility of public buildings,
researchers used observed inundation depth as the variable that was used in tsunami fragility
equation.
Since my research was the first to use inundation depth of the simulated tsunami as the
variable used in equation, i proposed an idea to my undergraduate supervisor to use fragility
equation that was published by Shinichi Koshimura in his paper as a reference equation
because his research was conducted in Banda Aceh and used simulated inundation depth as
the variable in the tsunami fragility equation. My idea was accepted and therefore this
method was used by my colleagues who had similar topic for their undergraduate thesis.
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1. The most likely option is applying for a lecturer in Syiah Kuala University in which i
studied my undergraduate degree as a civil engineering student. With knowledge and
practical skill I learn from my master degree in Australia would help me improve the
quality of the future civil engineer in Aceh.
2. The second option is applying for a researcher position at Tsunami and Disaster
Mitigation Research Center (TDMRC) to continue conducting further researches
related to tsunami and coastal hazards. Here at TDMRC, the goal is to be able to
establish a tsunami risk map or tsunami zoning map containing areas that would be
likely affected by potential tsunami disasters.

3. The last option would be to work as a laboratory assistant or flume operator at

TDMRC.