Future Indonesian Tsunamis: Towards End-to-end Risk quantification (FITTER)

Lloyd's Tercentenary Research Foundation and Lighthill Risk Network funded research project executed by University College London (UCL).

Serge Guillas (UCL, PI), Dimitra Salmanidou (UCL, co-I), Rozana Himaz (UCL, co-I), Mohammad Heidarzadeh (Bath, co-I) and the Insurance Development Forum (IDF)

Academic papers and project reports: https://github.com/OasisLMF/UCLFitter/tree/main/referencedBy

Model data: https://github.com/OasisLMF/UCLFitter/tree/main/model_data

Model and data licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA). This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Key outcomes (excerpted from End of project: Summary of outputs and impacts 27 February 2023):

1. The FITTER project has developed the first high-resolution tsunami risk model for Indonesia, capable of estimating economic losses from local and regional tsunami hazard. The information provided by the model supports risk-informed decision making for Disaster Risk Management and Disaster Risk Financing, including support to ex-ante disaster risk financing and the development of a national Risk Pooling Fund (World Bank and Ministry of Finance).

2. The project has estimated economic losses to livelihoods based on damage to household assets. The model can be extended to estimate losses to other public and private asset types to assess the protection gap.

3. A key innovation to address societal risk is the estimation of impact on the livelihoods of affected people. A new set of livelihood functions accounts for impacts of household and business assets, and health expenditure due to tsunamis. This information can support design of social safety nets and risk financing strategies as well as DRM activities. Examples of clear, practical, and positive societal impact include the following:

• The enhanced risk output can be used to design social impact bonds to mitigate livelihood loss following a tsunami. Social impact bonds are an innovative financial tool to mitigate impact of climate risk in developing countries. Some of the FITTER team are in preliminary discussions with PLAN Indonesia about the possibility of designing gender and inclusion sensitive social impact bonds using better risk output. This is work that may be carried out after the end of the FITTER project subject to funding from sources such as the UKRI.

• The FITTER team supported Dr. Semeidi Husrin of BRIN (the National Research and Innovation Agency, Indonesia) to secure funds from BRIN to work on establishing an improved tsunami early warning system over areas of South Java in 2022. The FITTER project contributions in terms of developing an Oasis-based case study of the impact of tsunamis will enable quantifying the potential benefits of investing in early warning systems. This will support buy-in from government agencies that are to implement the system.

• The project has also estimated health costs to households based on changes to out-of-pocket health spending. The methods can be used as the basis to develop health-related, disaster sensitive, social protection measures.

4. The model is provided in the open-source Oasis Loss Modelling Framework and uses open data. The model is available to technical users in Indonesian agencies to maintain and extend their view of tsunami risk supporting LTRF's open and collaborative approach to research.

5. FITTER’s research on vessel evacuation modelling for ports introduces new ways of mitigating impacts. The modelling will be incorporated by Dr. Semeidi Husrin into his BRIN-funded work on early warning systems.

6. Further than including earthquake-generated tsunamis the project also provides, for the first time, estimates of tsunami hazard generated by submarine landslides, crucial for full consideration of tsunami risk to Indonesia, especially over East Kalimantan, the new capital region of Indonesia.

7. To foster collaboration and practical application of the data and models beyond the project, the project team with the assistance of IDF, is establishing relationships with disaster researchers and practitioners in Indonesia, via the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), National Board for Disaster Management (BNPB), and Ministry of Finance. The aim is to support a diverse community of users that can collaborate in addressing tsunami risk and similar research areas.