Dr Thanti Octavianti

• Position:Lecturer
• Telephone:+4411732 83745
• Email:Thanti.Octavianti@uwe.ac.uk

About me

I am a social scientist with an engineering background. I joined UWE as a research fellow in cities, water and resilience in December 2018, before taking up a new role as Lecturer in Applied Geography in August 2021.

I completed my PhD in the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University in 2019. I hold MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management from Oxford University and BEng in Environmental Engineering from Universitas Indonesia. I also completed a one-year research project in the River Engineering Lab at Kyushu University, Japan in 2011. 

Prior to doing postgraduate studies, I worked as a consultant in the Indonesian Ministry of Public Works, where I assessed the local governments' performance in the provision of water services.

My research can be grouped into flood resilience and water security measurement. I studied the socio-political dynamics of large-scale water infrastructures. One of them was the investigation of the path dependency of Jakarta's flood responses over the past 400 years, which culminated in its 'giant' seawall plan.

Another research strand is the examination of a variety of methods to measure water security. I have been working with Prof Chad Staddon to develop the Household Water Insecurity Experiences survey module for application in diverse settings and focuses. A recent application of the survey was to measure the relationship between household water insecurity and handwashing practices in the Rohingya refugee communities in Bangladesh. We also critically reviewed 100+ publications proposing methods to measure water security and observed that there are two dominant research clusters in the field: experiential scale-based metrics and resource-based metrics.

I am developing an interest in investigating the social factors, both at the institutional and individual/community levels, of the use of smart technologies, e.g. artificial intelligence, in managing flood risks in cities. Please get in touch to explore potential research collaboration. 

Current and past research projects:
- Principal Investigator, UWE Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Researcher (VC ECR) Development Award 2023-25 (£25,000). “When blaming technology is easier: Fairness and accountability of using machine learning in disaster risk management” (August 2023 – July 2025)

- Co-investigator, The Royal Society’s International Exchanges Scheme – Cost Share Programme 2023 (£12,000). “Spatiotemporal Variation Characteristics Of Compound Dry And Hot Events And Their Impacts On Vegetation Growth Across The Mid-latitudes Of Eurasia” (April 2023 – March 2025)

- Co-Investigator, British Council’s Researcher Links Challenge Prize (£15,000) “Enhancing water resilience to climate and dam operation risks using hydrological model, space techniques and stakeholder engagement in Vietnam” (August 2021 – March 2022)  

Key achievements/prizes:

-2015 and 2018, Graduate Academic Prize from Trinity College, University of Oxford

-2015 - 2019, Awardee of the Jardine Foundation-University of Oxford Postgraduate Scholarship to read a doctoral study at Oxford University

Area of expertise

Disaster risk management, ethics and policies, Artificial Intelligence, water security, water infrastructure, sustainability, flood resilience

Publications

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