The Regional and City Planning Department (DPWK) of Diponegoro University in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN-GCR) held a program entitled “Developing the Capacity of Student Scientists for Supporting Disadvantaged Communities to Cope with Flooding” (DECAF) on Tuesday (2/5/2023). The symbolic opening event as well as the presentation of the first material from this program was held in the Theater Room, Regional and City Planning Department Undip.
DECAF is a collaborative project funded by APN-GCR and led by Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) by collaborating with several leading universities in Asia Pacific, including Diponegoro University (Indonesia), Spring University (Myanmar), Clemson University (United States), University of Nottingham Ningbo (English/China), and Education University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong). This program aims to provide preparation for student researchers to be able to deal with flood problems that often occur in Indonesia. In this project, later students from various departments and universities will receive a series of modules packaged in the form of online classes and field practicums to learn about flood risk management.
A total of 256 (two hundred and fifty six) participants from various departments carried out two phases of activity. The first phase consists of a series of 6 hybrid and online classes taught by experts from Diponegoro University, Victoria University of Wellington and several partner universities. Then for the second phase, lectures are carried out in the form of field practice and use 4 training modules which will be implemented in Pekalongan City, Central Java. In this program, several local parties were also invited as partners, such as the Central Java Pusdataru Service, BAPPEDA of Pekalongan City, BPBD of Pekalongan City, and the NGO Mercy Corps Indonesia and Kemitraan.
Rukuh Setiadi, S.T., MEM. Ph.D., a lecturer at the Regional and City Planning Department Undip and one of the administrators of this program said, “the existence of the DECAF program is felt to be very beneficial for students, especially students at Undip”. According to him, the existence of a collaboration program with universities from abroad not only encourages knowledge renewal, but also provides opportunities for students who take part in this program to be able to carry out multidisciplinary collaborations with students from different scientific fields. “This program is very useful for students in Indonesia in general, and Undip in particular. And more importantly, this program encourages multidisciplinary collaboration from students from various scientific fields,” he said.
Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Prof. Ir. M. Agung Wibowo, M.M., M.Sc., Ph.D., welcomed this event. He hopes that this program would not only benefit students, but also the government and society, especially the people in Pekalongan City. “Hopefully this program can be useful, not only for students, but also for the government and people in Pekalongan City,” he hoped.
