Niua

Umamaheshwaran Rajasekar


Senior Advisor

Dr. Umamaheshwaran Rajasekar is Chair, Urban Resilience at the National Institute of Urban Affairs. His interests are in the field of disaster risk reduction, climate change and urban resilience and has over 17 Years of experience in development sector. He is currently involved in mainstreaming urban resilience across Indian cities through development of policy briefs, indicators and frameworks. He is Co-Lead, Asia Pacific Advisory committee of Global Resilience Cities Network; Co-Chair, Data Integration & Data Science for Urban Life and Smart Cities, Co-Data; Technical committee member, Coalition of Disaster Resilience Infrastructure; Member, Strategic Advisory Group for Asian cities climate change resilience program, Global Urban Observation and Information (GUOI) Initiative. His work on Urban Services Monitoring was recognized by UN Secretary General’s Big Data Challenge as "Projects to Watch Winner". Apart from this he is a recipient of Global Fellowship for Social Innovation; National Science Foundation Research Grant, USA; NUFFIC Fellow; Vastu Shilpa foundation award; VMS Medal by the Indian Institute of Engineers; Distinguished student award from Gujarat institute of civil engineers and architect and Outstanding Student award by CEPT University. Prior to this he was associated with Taru where he has also worked in area of hazard risk modeling, vulnerability analysis and implementation of early warning systems for naturals hazards. Umamaheshwaran is an alumnus of Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, India. He holds a PhD in Environmental Modeling from Indiana State University, USA. and Masters in Geoinformatics from Twente University, The Netherlands.

Area of Expertise
Disaster risk reduction, Urban Resilience, Climate change

Qualifications

Projects List