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Keiko Saito

Disaster Risk Management Specialist

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Keiko Saito is a Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Specialist with the GFDRR Labs team. She specializes in the application of geospatial data for disaster risk management. She brings with her more than 10 years of experience in this field. Her interest is in bringing in the geospatial dimension into disaster risk management for all stages of the disaster cycle, from preparedness through to recovery and reconstruction. Inspired by the hackathons she has been helping organize this year in more than 10 cities around the world, she hopes to make an impact at the community level to reduce the risk from disasters, by generating innovative, community based disaster preparedness measures that also eventually feedback into policy levels. Prior to joining the Bank, she was a Director at Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd working in a multidisciplinary risk management and assessment team, a Willis Research Fellow and a Senior Research Associate at the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge. She has a long track record on post-disaster damage assessments using remote sensing starting in 2001 with the Gujarat (India) earthquake, Molise (Italy) earthquake (2002), Bam (Iran) earthquake (2003), Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami (2004), Kashmir (Pakistan) earthquake (2005), Wenchuan earthquake (2008), Haiti earthquake (2010), Pakistan floods (2010), the Great Eastern Japan earthquake and tsunami (2011), Nigeria floods (2012), Limpopo (Mozambique) flood (2012). A native of Japan, she has an M.Phil (Geography) and a PhD on the use of remotely sensed data for post-earthquake damage assessment both from the University of Cambridge, UK.