Duminda Perera

Duminda Perera is a water resource professional with 15 years of research and technical assistance experience with a primary focus area on water-related disasters. He is a civil engineering graduate of the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, and holds Masters and Doctoral degrees in Urban and Environmental Engineering from Kyushu University, Japan. Dr. Perera’s expertise covers surface and subsurface hydrology, numerical modeling, disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, climate change impact assessments, integrated flood management, and capacity development. Before joining UNU-INWEH, he worked for many years in Japan as a research specialist at the UNESCO International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management on various water-related disaster and climate change projects. Since joining UNU, he has been working on climate change, disaster risk reduction, and water resources variability. Dr. Perera also serves as a member of the Climate Change Expert Group of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and a focal point of the Expert Group for Disaster Risk Reduction formed by UNDRR. He is an Adjunct Professor at McMaster University and Ottawa University. His current commitments at UNU-INWEH are conducting projects on operational flood early warning systems, ageing water storage infrastructure, and water-related threats to megacities, and various other water-related disasters, their impacts, and risk reduction actions. Dr. Perera published extensively on water-related disasters and disaster risk reduction.