UNESCO Chair participates in co-badged YMSC SECED-EEFIT event: On the Ground After the Quake

Dr. Ahsana Parammal Vatteri, Research Fellow at the UNESCO Chair in Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Engineering- UCL, was invited to speak at the co-badged YMSC SECED-EEFIT Lunchtime Talk on 13 May 2026, exploring the ECR experiences from the frontlines of Earthquake Reconnaissance. 

Ahsana’s talk reflected on her experience participating in two hybrid EEFIT missions: specifically, the remote reconnaissance experience following the Aegean Sea earthquake and tsunami in 2020 and the in-person field mission to Turkey after the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes. Through these contrasting deployments, she explored how different reconnaissance approaches shape the way we gather, interpret, and communicate post-disaster data. The hybrid mission highlighted the importance of digital tools, coordination across distributed teams, and working with secondary data sources, while the field mission emphasized rapid damage assessment, situational awareness, and engagement with affected communities and local experts. Drawing on both experiences, she reflected on how her background was helpful in each context and discussed the key lessons learned, including the trade-offs between the two approaches.

Ahsana was joined by Mr. Sahin Dede, PhD Researcher at UCL, and Mr. Mauritz Feldbrugge,  Research Associate at the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS-RS), sharing their experiences from the 2023 Turkey Mission and the 2023 Al Haouz earthquake (Morocco), respectively.