The Indian Ocean Tsunami 20 years on: driving change and changing lives

Professor William Allsop

William Allsop is honorary professor at UCL and at University of Edinburgh. He worked at HR Wallingford for more than 48 years and headed William Allsop Consulting since 2017.  

A specialist in coastal engineering, particularly seawalls and breakwaters, his team at Wallingford invented the first pneumatic Tsunami Simulator in 2008, later versions of which have been successfully used by the MAKEWAVES research consortium led by Professor Rossetto at UCL. 

Dr Keith Adams

Keith is a lecturer in the Department of Civil and Building Services Engineering at London South Bank University. He is an earthquake engineer with interest in disaster risk management and has conducted research in tsunami engineering and risk.

He is an active member of ICE and IStructE in the UK and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

He has contributed to the management committee of EEFIT, undertaken a remote mission for the Haiti Earthquake of 2021, a return mission to Banda Aceh, site of the Indian Ocean EQ and tsunami, and most recently to Morocco to evaluate cascading hazards after the recent EQ. He is a regular attendee at SECED meetings held in London at the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Prof. Andre Barbosa

Professor Andre Barbosa is the Cecil and Sally Drinkward professor in structural engineering at Oregon State University (OSU). He holds an honorary professor position at the University of Bristol and an adjunct professor position at the Composite Materials & Engineering Center at the Washington State University.

His research focuses on the development of experimental testing programs and numerical tools and techniques geared towards improving structural performance and resilience of the built environment to multiple hazards.

He has received various awards, such as the 2017 State of Oregon Daily Journal of Commerce Newsmaker for contributions to the Cross-Laminated Timber Industry and the 2023 ASCE Croes Medal for work on soil-structure interaction.

Before joining OSU in 2011, Barbosa completed a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD).

Prior to starting his Ph.D. in 2005, he worked for seven years as a structural engineer in Portugal.

Jonas Cels

Jonas is a PhD researcher in tsunami system vulnerability and resilience at UCL.

For his PhD, Jonas has developed novel analytical tools for the tsunami vulnerability assessment of structures as well as assessing the tsunami resilience of the education system in Sri Lanka. 

As a member of MAKEWAVES, Jonas lead experiments investigating tsunami-structural and foundation interaction using the pneumatic wave simulator at HR Wallingford.

Jonas was a practicing architect before obtaining his MSc in Earthquake Engineering and Disaster Management at UCL.

Ian Chandler

Ian Chandler is a Senior Engineer within HR Wallingford’s Engineering Group. He has over 10 years’ experience of physical and computational modelling of hydraulic and coastal structures. Ian has particular experience in physical modelling overtopping and of tsunami propagation and interaction with coastal defences and buildings.

Previous to joining HR Wallingford Ian completed a PhD at the University of Warwick studying the mixing of solute pollutants across the sediment-water interface, specifically the vertical variation in mixing coefficient.

Dr. Marta del Zoppo

Marta Del Zoppo is assistant professor of structural engineering at the Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture of University of Naples Federico II (Italy), conducting research in the field of tsunami engineering and sustainable retrofit solutions for existing reinforced concrete and masonry structures.

She has been awarded a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (2021) to develop a research project on tsunami resilience at EPICentre UCL (UK). She is also the Co-Chair of fib Task Group 2.13 "Design and assessment for tsunami loading".

Prof. Nils Goseberg

Dr. Nils Goseberg is full professor of Hydromechanics, Coastal and Ocean Engineering at TU Braunschweig, Germany since 2018.

He has successfully built an internationally leading and recognized research team in coastal and ocean engineering.

 He has revitalised unique coastal research facilities in the form of the saltwater wave current flume in Braunschweig and the large wave-current flume in the Coastal Research Center Hannover (GWK+).

He is currently leading his European Research Council project ‘AngryWaters – Scaling fluid-driven processes: Building Collapse in Extreme Flow Conditions‘.

Rashmin Gunasekera

Rashmin Gunasekera is a senior disaster risk management specialist working at the World Bank Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) in Washington DC. Rashmin leads the two Global Programs of Disaster Risk Analytics (GPDRA) and Disaster Risk Financing and Resilience (DRF&R) at GFDRR. Rashmin has over 20 years of work experience in disaster risk quantification extending to the public sector, re/insurance industry and academia.

He has also presented and published innovative research and operations papers on Disaster Risk Management. Under the GPDRA program, Rashmin leads the highly innovative and popular Global Rapid Damage Estimation (GRADE) assessments that has revolutionised the World Bank’s disaster response strategy and fast-tracked post disaster emergency operations. 

He currently holds an honorary lectureship at University College London (UCL) and has a MPhil in GIS and Remote Sensing (Uni. of Cambridge, UK) and a PhD in earthquake seismology (Uni. Of Durham, UK).

Dr. Denis Istrati

Dr. Denis Istrati is a visiting professor in the Laboratory of Harbour Works at NTUA and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at TUB. He works on large-scale physical experiments and cutting-edge computational fluid dynamics and fluid-structure interaction modelling that aims to decipher and quantify the effects of extreme coastal storms, tsunamis, cascading effects and multi-hazard scenarios on the built environment.

He has participated as PI, co-PI and researcher in several projects during his work as a faculty in the United States, and more recently in Europe.

Currently, Dr. Istrati co-leads/participates at NTUA in multi-million European projects, like the Horizon Europe project TRIQUETRA and the Interreg project ARIANNA, which focus on natural hazard risk assessment and the development of mitigation measures including nature-based solutions

Dr. Miwako Kitamura

Dr. Miwako Kitamura is a researcher at Tohoku University’s International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS). Her career trajectory was significantly influenced by her volunteer work during the Great East Japan Earthquake, a transformative experience that led her to transition from professional photography to academia.

Dr. Kitamura’s research focuses on critical issues related to social vulnerability in disaster contexts, particularly gender, disability, and socially marginalized groups. Her work emphasizes community-driven approaches and the empowerment of women in disaster risk reduction (DRR).

In addition to her research role, Dr. Kitamura serves as the deputy director of the UCL Collaboration Centre for Gender and Disaster Research at IRIDeS. She is also a Senior Fellow (Non-Resident) at Sasakawa USA

Ziggy Lubkowski

Ziggy is an internationally recognised natural hazard expert. He is an associate director and is the global geo-seismic skills leader at Arup with over 35 years relevant experience. He led the tsunami hazard studies for the Award winning PRES Constitución Masterplan in Chile following the 2010 Maule earthquake and contributed to the rebuilding of Aceh following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami through projects for Muslim Aid and the Disasters Emergency Committee.

Ziggy was co-author of the guide Lessons from Aceh, providing knowledge on all relevant natural hazards and siting. He has also participated and led post-earthquake field missions to USA, Türkiye, Indonesia and Chile.

He has been chair of SECED and is contributing to the PIANC seismic guidelines for ports and harbours.

In 2018, he was awarded the role of visiting professor in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering at UCL by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

David McGovern

David is a physical modeler in the fields of coastal and ocean engineering, sediment transport and fluid mechanics. His research comprises of two related strands: tsunami interactions with the built environment, and the adaptation of coastal infrastructure to sea level rise.

Prof. Tiziana Rossetto

Professor Tiziana Rossetto is a structural engineer who is recognised for her contributions to the characterisation of building performance under natural hazards and for her multidisciplinary approach to disaster risk mitigation.

She has worked on tsunami engineering since participating in the EEFIT reconnaissance of countries affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and has delivered new methods for experimental tsunami simulation, for the structural analysis of buildings subjected to earthquakes, tsunami, individually and in sequence.

She is a past chair of EEFIT and SECED and current co-chair of the FIB working group on tsunami engineering. She is also currently vice dean for International partnerships and strategy for the faculty of Engineering Sciences at UCL.

Prof. Ioan Nistor

Dr. Ioan NISTOR is a professor of hydraulic and coastal engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Nistor researches hazards associated with extreme coastal hazards such as tsunamis and hurricanes, coastal structures, impacts of extreme events on coastal communities and infrastructure.

His work includes several post-tsunami forensic engineering surveys – he was a member of the first scientific team who surveyed the damage induced by the 2002 Indian Ocean Tsunami and Earthquake in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

 Dr. Nistor is a voting member of the ASCE7 Tsunami Committee and member of the JSCE Tsunami Committee (Debris Group), as well as member of the Tsunami Working Group of the Federation internationale de beton (FIB).

He is an elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), Fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE) and Fellow of the Engineers Institute of Canada (EIC).

Prof. Liam Wotherspoon

Liam is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Auckland.

He has held leadership roles in a number of national research programmes in that focus on the resilience of critical infrastructure across a range of natural hazards.

He is a fellow of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering and a member of the Aotearoa New Zealand Earthquake Science Advisory Panel (AESAP).

Dr Davide Wüthrich

Davide Wüthrich is a hydraulic engineer, currently assistant professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

He has over 10 years of research and consulting experience across Switzerland, Canada, Japan, and Australia, where he is honorary lecturer at The University of Queensland.

His expertise spans across hydraulic engineering and environmental fluid mechanics, particularly on the interaction between extreme water events and structures. 

Davide is actively engaged in multiple international projects aimed at disaster prevention and post-flood forensic surveys. His current research focuses on flood protection measures, emphasizing a multiphase analysis of extreme water events and the impact of floating debris on flood risk management.