Lecturer Staff Faculty of Geography Gadjah Mada University Ratih Fitria Putri has received a prestigious Faculty for the Future Fellowship from the Schlumberger Foundation. The fellowships are awarded to talented women from developing and emerging countries who are pursuing advanced degrees in science and engineering at leading universities worldwide. As a fellow, Ratih receives a grant of up to $50,000 per year to support her research on Land Subsidence. Ratih, who is from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, started studying environmental geography science as an undergraduate and master student at Faculty of Geography, Gadjah Mada University, where she became concerned about the Monitoring Land Subsidence and Landslide Hazard Using Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar Technique Observed with TerraSAR-X & ALOS PALSAR as Comparison of L Band, X Band and GPS Data Analysis for Indonesia Hazard Mapping.
“The natural disasters are increasing in their frequency and catastrophic impact in Indonesia. The availability of natural disaster database is still lacking in tropical regions, since mapping natural disaster over a large area requires a great deal of time and funding”, Ratih said. “The target areas of the study are in tropical region of Jakarta Urban Area in Jakarta Province and Kayangan Catchment Area in Yogyakarta Special Province, Indonesia. Indonesia is prone to natural disaster due to its position of being squeezed geologically by three major world plates and this fact makes Indonesia one of the most dangerous countries regarding natural disasters. Local governments and responsible bodies are not able to monitor the area because of the lack of spatial information supporting the decision making regarding the land condition”. The lack of detailed and accurate susceptibility maps make it generally quite difficult to evaluate the extent of area affected by floods or landslides. Ratih is working to explains the ability and advantages of DInSAR as an efficient and cost-effective method compared to conventional ground survey for disaster monitoring in tropical area, especially landslides and land subsidence. “In her first year as a Ph.D. student, Ratih mastered the use differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar method in SAR satellite data”, said Ratih’s research advisor Josaphat Tetuko, a professor in the Division Earth Information Science at Information Processing and Computer Science Department, and the director of the Josaphat Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory (JMRSL), Chiba University, Japan.
Ratih is also being advised by Hiroaki Kuze, a professor of the Division Earth Information Science at Information Processing and Computer Science Department. Both Josaphat and Kuze are members of CEReS (Center for Environmental Remote Sensing (CEReS), Chiba University, who has contributed to the Japan science community of environmental studies through archiving, processing and disseminating satellite data since its establishment as a national cooperative research center in 1995.
“JMRSL is highly interdisciplinary. People are doing GPS and antenna study, satellite and disaster field study, satellite image processing computational modeling and develop unmanned Autonomous Vehicle (UAV) research,” Ratih said. “My research will reveal the ability and advantages of DInSAR as efficient and cost-effective method for subsidence disaster monitoring in tropical area which were caused by natural disaster and human activities. The important of this research are used for prevention and preparedness, to assess the scope of potential disasters and help mitigate damage that could occur.”
The Schlumberger Foundation is an independent nonprofit entity that supports science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Recognizing the link between science, technology, and socio-economic development, as well as the key role of education in realizing individual potential, the Schlumberger Foundation flagship program is Faculty for the Future, which was established in 2004.