Prof. Dwikorita Karnawati (Rita) Ph.D., has been appointed as the Head of Indonesia Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG), since November 2017, after her completion in serving as the President of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), a prominent university with 55,000 students in Indonesia. She has extensive professional experiences and academic backgrounds as a Professor in Environmental Geology and Disaster Mitigation at UGM. Indeed, she is very active in promoting and developing the National Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (MHEWS), and very well-respected as one of the key expert leaders in developing Presidential Decree for the Indonesia MHEWS.
Obtaining the Ph.D. Degree in Earth Sciences from Leeds University, UK in 1996, she continued her research on Hydrometeorological Disaster Prediction in the Post Doctoral Program at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan. Then, she received the Leverhulme Professorship Award to further developed her research for Community-Based Landslide Early Warning System, in The Institute for Advanced Studies, at Bristol University, UK in 2003. In October 2011, her research in Community-Based Landslide Early Warning System was selected as one of the best research on Landslide Disaster Risk Reduction by the International Consortium on Landslides, which led to the appointment of UGM as the World Center of Excellence for Landslide Disaster Risk Reduction. Furthermore, she was awarded the Fulbright Senior Research Program to develop Integration of Technical and Human Sensors for Early Warning System of Landslides, carried out in The Visualization Center-Homeland Security Post Graduate Program, at San Diego State University, California, USA in 2011-2012.
Since 2015, Prof. Rita has been appointed as the Vice President of the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL). In such a position, she actively promoted and developed the integration of the technical sensors and human sensors for the hydro-meteorological early warning system, in which one of her team innovative products has become an international reference (ISO 22327) in 2018. In 2019 she has been elected as the Chair of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group of Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWMS). Indeed, due to her extraordinary works, she received series of research grants from the World Bank, as well as from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the British Council, which then very important to support the process of developing the Multi-Hazard Early Warning System, especially related to hydrometeorology disaster, earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia, with respect to life survivability and environmental protection.
In addition, Prof. Rita has been consistently working on capacity development and education programs for Disaster Mitigation since 2004. Between 2004 and 2014, she served as the coordinator for the ASEAN University Network – South East Asia Engineering Education Development Program (AUN Seed Net) in the field of Disaster Mitigation (which includes hydrometeorological disaster). In her recent position as the Head of the Agency, she actively drives the innovation on Early Warning Technology and Impact-based Forecasting Systems for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics, powered by the Big Data, Artificial Intelligent (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT), which also connected to Social Media, Mobile Apps and YouTube. Receiving an extensive recognition from national and local counterparts as well as from various international organizations for her work, she also has been invited to deliver keynote speeches and lectures in conferences, meetings, and events in various universities and institutions in the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, China, and Africa, to share her best practices of her experiences in Disaster Risk Reduction and Early Warning System.
