Dominic Sett is an Associate Academic Officer leading the SAFER-BiH project, which provides risk information to enhance disaster risk management in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the UNU-EHS component of the FloodAdaptVN project, which provides science-based support for flood risk adaptation implementation in Hue, Viet Nam. He is an alumnus of UNU-EHS and the University of Bonn’s Joint Master’s programme, and currently pursues his PhD in Disaster Risk Research at the University of Potsdam.
Through his involvement in various research projects, Dominic has a strong background in assessing and better understanding climate and disaster risks, the barriers and enablers of climate change adaptation, and opportunities for climate mainstreaming and coherence-building, particularly linked to Adaptive Social Protection. His main interest is assessing households’ behavioural drivers of past engagement and motivation for future engagement in flood risk adaptation measures - a topic he is currently pursuing in his PhD thesis. The geographic focus of his past research engagements has been mainly on Southeast Asia, including Viet Nam, Indonesia and Laos, as well as South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Germany.
Dominic has authored several research publications and policy reports, and has engaged in capacity-building and outreach campaigns. He is a passionate researcher and has won the German Committee for Disaster Risk Reduction (DKKV) Promotional Award for his master's thesis on the role of social-psychological factors in the adoption of rainwater harvesting as a measure to adapt to water scarcity in Cape Town. In addition, he won the European Geoscience Union (EGU) Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award for his poster on households’ contributions to flood risk management in the highly flood-prone city of Hue, Viet Nam.
Apart from research, he is also engaged in teaching, most notably in the Joint Master’s programme of UNU-EHS and the University of Bonn, and has acted as a guest lecturer at UNU-MERIT, where he served as course coordinator for modules of the risk and vulnerability specialization, as well as at the University of Potsdam, TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, and several international universities.