Support Action for Strengthening Palestine capabilities for seismic Risk Mitigation (SASPARM 2.0)

 

Dabbeek, J.(1), Germagnoli, F.(2), Borzi, B.(2), Ceresa, P.(3), Monteiro, R.(3), Sader, S.(1)

 

(1)An-Najah National University (ANU), Palestine (2)European centre for training and research in earthquake engineering (EUCENTRE), Italy (3)Institute for Advanced Study of Pavia (IUSS), Italy

This presentation aims at introducing the SASPARM 2.0 Project which is co-funded by ECHO, and to disseminate the project objectives, plans, expected results and to share the experience of project partners in strengthening Palestine capabilities for seismic risk mitigation.

 

 Objectives of the project

 Earthquakes are one of the most catastrophic natural events, both in terms of casualties and economic losses. Nevertheless, the mitigation of seismic risk, which comes from the convolution of hazard (i.e. measure of the shaking severity), exposure (as scale of the impact of the damage) and vulnerability (measure of how prone a structure is to be damaged by the ground shaking) is possible. Indeed, it is not possible to act on hazard and it is nearly impossible to act on exposure (cities cannot be moved), but it is possible and dutiful to reduce vulnerability. To achieve this, one of the major issues to overcome is the lack of proper risk perception by citizens, making difficult to implement plans for seismic risk mitigation.

 This project refers to a population living in Palestine that, thanks to the exploitation and dissemination of the results of the SASPARM FP7-Project (www.sasparm.ps), has become aware of the concept of seismic risk. Furthermore, Palestinian stakeholders, governmental (GO) and non-governmental (NGO) Institutions, students and practitioners have shown a huge interest in the SASPARM activities and their outcomes. In addition, a new Seismic Building Code has been recently introduced in Palestine. Therefore, the awareness of the local community is of fundamental importance since the citizens have to monitor their buildings and be able to understand, with and, when feasible, without the advice of an expert, if their house can withstand an earthquake or if retrofit is required applying Seismic Standards. The practitioners as well as the GO and NGO stakeholders have to be aware of the importance of the right application and implementation of the new Seismic Building Code with the final aim of improving the seismic risk mitigation in their Country with the support and collaboration of EU partners. Within this context, the need for prevention in the field of seismic risk is strongly required and this encouraged the proposal of the new project, named SASPARM 2.0. It represents a strategic avenue and a comprehensive advance of the post-SASPARM environment and involves the same Consortium – the An-Najah National University, Eucentre and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IUSS) of Pavia. Since February 2013, Nablus became the first Palestinian city to join the UNISDR's Making Cities Resilient Campaign hence, undertaking the activities identified in SASPARM 2.0 will represent a natural evolution for the Palestinian Partner within a collaborative European framework for mitigating seismic risk.

 

Actions and means involved

 The work of the project is split into 8 operative tasks, which operate within the framework of a Web-Based Platform (WBP) (task G) for seismic risk mitigation. The WBP integrates a database (DB) to collect vulnerability data on buildings (task B), self-assessment tools to allow common people and practitioners to understand potentially unsafe situations (task F) XXXVI UNESCO-RELEMR International Workshop Reducing Earthquake Losses in the Extended Mediterranean Region (RELEMR): Ravenna, Italy, 2015 24 and how to mitigate the risk related to critical situations (task C). Training will play a fundamental role in the project activities and the target groups are students, practitioners, citizens and stakeholders (task D). The knowledge of seismic risk pending on individual properties will raise the awareness of citizens on the related seismic hazard and will help them to be addressed towards policy for risk management aimed to mitigate the socioeconomic losses such as insurance coverage (task E).

The WBP will constitute the tool linking the different actors and policies throughout the disaster management cycle, which translates into operational the technical data provided for the risk assessment to be used by the risk management governance. Nablus city will represent the real case-of-study for the implementation and calibration of the project actions. The latter will be then extended to the other Palestinian municipalities through the direct involvement of the above mentioned targeted groups. The interaction between project tasks is shown in the following figure. In addition to those shown in the plot, the tasks of project management (task A) and publicity (task H) will be implemented.

 

 Expected results

The main outcomes of the project will be:

· An increased awareness of seismic risk by the actors involved in the project ­ students, citizens, practitioners, GO and NGO stakeholders;

 · A shared DB, including a large number of vulnerability data;

· A WBP that integrates the data above through vulnerability models developed for the Palestinian building typologies, to evaluate seismic risk;

· Guidelines on the implementation of measures to reduce vulnerability hence mitigate seismic risk;

· Guidelines for risk management policy aimed at mitigating the impact of socioeconomic losses.

Conference Title

The XXXVI International Workshop on Seismicity and Earthquake Engineering in the Extended Mediterranean Region

Conference Country

Italy

Conference Date

Oct. 26, 2015 - Oct. 29, 2015

Conference Sponsor

UNESCO-Paris office and USGs