This year it seemed that the earth is increasingly shaking in Middle East and surrounding regions. We experienced heavy disasters for example in Türkiye and Syria, Marocco, and Afghanistan. But also, countries like Iran, are highly risk prone to earthquakes. This knowledge transfer workshop is looking into operational insights, international aid mechanisms, lessons to learn/lessons learned and tools from different earthquake events and earthquake prone regions and how different institutions are analyzing and preparing for this risk.

Overall, six knowledge transfer workshops among INCREASE partners will be conceptualized, organized, and moderated by DKKV. The aim of these workshops is to address relevant and current topics of the consortium. The first knowledge transfer workshop was dedicated to the topic of floods, whereas the second knowledge transfer workshop dealt with the concept of IDRM.

After a short tour de table of participants with their personal earthquake experiences the panel of four INCREASE partners started. Starting with the topic of rapid earthquake impact modelling followed by a short Q&A session the participants got to learn more about operational insights from the Türkiye and Syria earthquake and how the European Civil Protection Mechanism as well as the UN were activated to support the affected countries. The last presentation focused on challenges and opportunities in developing and implementing integrated earthquake risk management master plans.

After short discussion round in the end, the participants and panelists wished everyone happy holidays – looking forward to new project activities throughout the year 2024!