By John Caleb Orr, Construction Management Major, Mentor Prof Eric Lindsey.
I was given the opportunity to present some of Dr. Eric Lindsey’s work surrounding the causes and consequences of city wide subsidence in the Indonesian capital city, Jakarta. Dr. Lindsey and colleagues were able to use InSAR satellite technology to monitor changes in ground elevation over an extended period of time, revealing just how rapid the sinking has become. The effects can be seen in real time with entire districts of Jakarta being flooded by the coastal waters of the Java Sea. This flooding has reached such a severity that nation officials are considering moving the capital city off the coast, to the nearby island of Borneo. Dr. Lindsey concluded this subsidence was the direct result of poor water management, mixed with city wide impoverishment. Due to a growing population and dwindling resources, the people of Jakarta Indonesia, desperate for water, have resorted to digging personal wells in their homes. This unregulated water siphoning has become widespread within impoverished communities, leading to massive displacement of the Earth below the city. Since the ground below the city is made up not from a bedrock material, but instead possessing more clay like composition, the ground underneath the city lacks the foundational integrity to support this displacement. During weekly meetings with Dr. Lindsey I was able to create a visual representation of the subsidence in the form of a replaying movie. My goal with this form of presentation was to convey the real crisis in Jakarta in a format that would be digestible for those outside of the scientific community. As is often the case, scientific terms and vernacular can often lead to a lack of comprehension for those who are unfamiliar with the terms and phrases used in scientific writing. However, with a short, easy to comprehend series of pictures, everybody should be able to grasp the weight of the situation in Indonesia. Especially when we take some time to realize this is something that may affect us worldwide if the use of water isn’t regulated appropriately.
