Jakarta – The Telkom University Alumni Forum (FAST) visited the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) office on Tuesday, April 5, 2022. FAST President Sri Safitri invited FAST management and representatives from Telkom University. They are the Director of Research and Community Service, Dr. Kemas Muslim, Director of Bandung Techno Park, Dr. Koredianto Usman, S.T., M.Sc., and other Telkom University Representative Teams.
“FAST wants to bridge the campus (Telkom University, ed) with BNPB for research opportunities in the field of disaster,” said Sri Safitri, starting the discussion.
Fitri hopes that collaboration in research in disaster management can be established between Telkom University and BNPB. It is because Telkom University has facilities and digital technology support that can be used to achieve these goals.
On that occasion, the Director of Research and Community Service of Telkom University, Angga Rusdinar, S.T., M.T., Ph.D., stated that Telkom University had conducted many types of research and innovations related to disaster management.
“Since the Covid-19 pandemic, we have made UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, ed) or robot-based room disinfectants, and have been donated to the athletes’ homestay and the government,” added Angga. In addition, Angga also said that other research and innovations that Telkom University has carried out include making disaster detection and recovery systems, tsunami prediction and simulation, and AI (artificial intelligence, ed) to detect sea levels.
On this occasion, the Head of BNPB, Lt. Gen. Suharyanto, and other officials at BNPB welcomed the opportunities offered by FAST and Telkom University. According to him, disaster management in Indonesia is not only Covid-19 but also the one that grabs the world’s attention the most, namely forest fires.
“Although we know that the number of cases of COVID-19 has decreased, there is still another potential disaster, namely forest fires,” said TNI Lieutenant General Suharyanto.
Suharyanto felt the need to apply technology to optimize preventive and disaster management measures.
“Therefore, if we use technology to detect hotspots, we can take preventive measures more effectively and efficiently before the fire becomes big and burns the forest,” he added.
The head of BNPB also said that apart from these two disasters, there are other potential disasters such as tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes.
Suharyanto said, “We are also working intensively with the BMKG for the tsunami. However, I think it is also necessary to be able to detect volcanoes and to map areas affected by earthquakes.”
Suharyanto also hopes that the collaboration between Telkom University and BNPB facilitated by FAST can answer the problem of disaster data collection.
“Our main problem is data collection,” concluded the Head of the COVID-19 Task Force.