Earth Observatory of Singapore

At approximately 9:30pm local time (2:30pm GMT) on the 22 December 2018, a tsunami struck Indonesia’s Sunda Strait, which lies between the islands of Java and Sumatra, claiming over 430 lives. According to Indonesia’s disaster agency there are at least 1,500 injured, over 120 people still missing, and around 12,000 people have been displaced.

Our multi-disciplinary project explores the paleotsunami record in northwestern Aceh Province, Sumatra. We are focusing on an extraordinary sedimentary deposit in a coastal limestone cave that contains a series of tsunami deposits separated by guano, and offer a nearly complete mid-Holocene record of tsunamis. Our investigations will be incorporated into tsunami hazard modelling and risk assessment along the western...

Home to more than 50 million people, Myanmar is shaped like a giant kite with a long tail that sweeps down along the Andaman Sea.

Beneath the surface, invisible dangers affect Myanmar’s growing population, making it one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. In the north, mountain ranges mark the northeast limit of the Indian tectonic plate, which has been colliding with the southern edge of the Eurasian plate for tens of millions of years. It is this interaction that has helped push...

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.