Rahemeen Ahmed

Rahemeen Ahmed, who is a graduate student in structural engineering, interned at the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in Pakistan during the summer of 2023. 

"This [internship] was a great opportunity to understand the working culture in [Pakistan] and get hands-on experience in my area of interest, which is disaster resilience, in a part of the world that is very vulnerable to multiple disasters," Rahemeen shared.  

Read the Q&A below to learn more about Rahemeen's experience this summer.

What work was assigned to you during your internship?

I was initially tasked with reviewing the key guidelines and procedures that NDMA uses in its policy and program set-up. I was then tasked to review the spreadsheets used in assessing social vulnerabilities and the variables that are gathered through field work and internet research. Then, I worked on understanding and streamlining how the exposure assessments are done for seismic hazard to ensure efficient workflows for union councils.

What did you get out of the program? What was the most significant thing you learned? What challenges did you encounter and how did you overcome them?

The most significant thing I learnt is the sheer amount of effort that goes into compiling data on a district level since every city has multiple districts which are further sub-divided into union councils. The biggest challenge I originally experienced was understanding how the organization functioned since it has many, many sub-teams and specialties, and beyond that, it has different roles (advisory, training, coordination). I reviewed many resources and talked to multiple team leads to get a better understanding of that. 

Overall, this was an incredible experience, and I hope to keep the connections I established moving forward in my career since NDMA is also aiming to expand their collaboration with researchers and professionals across the globe.

Has this experience influenced your future plans, academically or professionally, in some way?

Yes, I would like to continue working in the government space for disaster management since I liked the overall coordination aspect of it, rather than just focusing on developing technical models as a consultant. While I like the specialization of that work, I really enjoyed the multidisciplinary nature of coordination work and I hope to continue my career in that.

How do you plan to incorporate this experience for your own personal growth?

I plan to slightly modify my career trajectory and focus on general disaster resilience [which involves] working directly with communities to tackle disasters, instead of specialization in creating technical risk models. This was also a very eye-opening experience since I understood the constraints on the ground that a lot of disaster management teams are working under (for example, reliance on open-source models). I hope in my work I can continue making a positive difference by bridging these gaps.