Senior Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Specialist - World Bank, Washington DC. • Contributed to over 120 (40 lending and 82 non-lending) World Bank projects. • Recipient of 10 World Bank VPU Awards 2014-2023. • WB Peer-reviewed for 17 DRM analytics and policy projects; High profile publ. in Int. journals. • Honorary Lecturer - University College London, UK. • Divisional Director and Senior Catastrophe Risk Analyst at Willis Re, UK. • Over 20 years combined experience within the Re/Insurance industry, public sector and academia, with particular expertise in disaster risk assessment and disaster risk financing. • PhD in Earthquake Seismology (Dunelm), MPhil in GIS and Remote Sensing (Cantab.). • Extensive project experience in Middle East & North Africa, Pan Africa wide, Eastern Europe, South Asia, South East Asia and Pacific, and Latin America and Caribbean Regions
Gunasekera, R., O. Ishizawa, J. Daniell, J. Macabuag, A. Pomonis, G. Toyos, and K. Cox (2023), The GRADE methodology: New frontier in rapid post-disaster damage estimation for the developing countries
• Gunasekera, R., J. Daniell, A. Pomonis, R. Arias, O. Ishizawa and H. Stone, (2018) The Global RApid-post-disaster Damage Estimation (GRADE) Approach and the Incorporation of Earth Observation (EO) Satellite Information, Int. Journal of Remote Sensing (in press)
• Gunasekera, R., O. Ishizawa, C. Aubrecht, B. Blankespoor, S. Murray, A. Pomonis, and J. Daniell, (2015), Developing an adaptive global exposure model to support the generation of country disaster risk profiles, Earth-Science Reviews, 150, 594–608.
• Daniell, J., A. Pomonis, H. Tsang, F. Wenzel, R. Gunasekera, and A. Schaefer, (2018), The top 100 fatal Earthquakes: Examining fatality risk reduction globally with respect to seismic code implementation, 16th European Earthquake Engineering Conf. Greece.
• Pita, G., R. Gunasekera, and O. Ishizawa, (2015), Windstorm Hazard Model for Disaster Risk Assessment in Central America, ICWE14, Brazil
• Suppasri, A., E. Mas, I. Charvet, R. Gunasekera, K. Imai, Y. Fukutani, Y. Abe, F. Imamura, (2012), Building damage characteristics based on surveyed data and fragility curves of the 2011 Great East Japan tsunami, Natural Hazards, 6 (2), 319-341.
• Gunasekera, R., (Invited Speaker), Pricing of Natural Disasters: The Role of Catastrophe Modelling in Re/Insurance, Insurance Congress of Developing Countries (ICDC), Colombo, 2013.
