Amarnath Giriraj

Giriraj Amarnath is the Principal Researcher Disaster Risk Management and Climate Resilience and leads the Research Group for Water Risks and Disasters at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) with specialization in agriculture, disaster risk management and digital innovation to agricultural risk management. Giriraj is a GEO Principal of IWMI, which is a GEO Participating Organization. His work on the Index-Based Flood Insurance (IBFI) product received the 2020 GEO Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Award. Giriraj previously worked at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) to understand disaster risks for mountain ecosystems (2008-2011) and was a Research Associate at the University of Bayreuth, Germany (2006-2008). In 2003, he received a PhD in applied remote sensing and landscape ecology from the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). In 2005, he worked as a postdoc at the French Institute of Pondicherry, India, on fire ecology and species niche modeling, and was a faculty member at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, teaching remote sensing for global change ecology. He has published more than 90 peer reviewed journal articles on various disciplines ranging from landscape ecology, biodiversity, disaster risk management, geospatial technologies.