Earth Observatory of Singapore

Asia and the Pacific are most at risk from natural disasters, according to a report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. More than 90 million people worldwide were affected by natural disasters in 2015. Asia is the world’s most disaster-prone continent, with 152 out of the 346 reported disasters worldwide. This isn’t surprising, given that it is both geologically active and the most populous region on Earth. In the last few decades, earthquakes,...

On 25 April 2015, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, destroying buildings and infrastructure across 31 of Nepal’s 70 districts. Approximately 9,000 people lost their lives to the earthquake that day, 22,000 suffered from injuries, and eight million were affected. I arrived in Kathmandu one week after the quake to support the government of Nepal in various response and recovery activities.

Our most recent documentary short film, ‘People of the Forest: Orang Rimba,’ premiered at the Singapore Eco Film Festival in early September 2017. The short offers a brief but intimate look at the lives of the Orang Rimba, a minority group of a few thousand nomadic tribespeople who live throughout the forests of Jambi province in Sumatra, Indonesia.

This project will be the first to continuously monitor haze at its source in Indonesia and will provide a jumping-off point to investigate the impacts of haze on local and global environments.