International Training Courses on „Seismology, Seismic Hazard Assessment and Risk Mitigation“

The GFZ organizes annually International Training Courses on “Seismology, Seismic Data Analysis, Hazard Assessment and Risk Mitigation”. They provide theoretical fundamentals and practical training for geo-scientists and engineers from countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The courses are being supported by the German Federal Foreign Office and are a contribution to the global UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).

In line with the growing demand by participants in former courses for mainly practice-oriented training and workshop discussions related to case studies, the course program comprises, besides introductory and state-of-the-art review lectures on the various subjects of earthquake seismology and risk assessment, extensive practical exercises, demonstrations, workshop discussions and scientific excursions. Generally, the course program aims at developing interdisciplinary problem understanding, acquaintance with the theoretical fundamentals and basic features of modern instrumentation, commonly used models and algorithms as well as developing practical skills in data evaluation and analysis. The courses are being announced through the GFZ website, the EMSC, and IRIS as well as printed information. Additional ad-hoc sponsors are mainly from the hosting institutions and governments in case of regional courses in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.

Since 1992 these 4-week courses are held alternately as world-wide open courses in Potsdam or as regional courses in earthquake-prone countries in Asia, Africa, or Latin America (2006 Kyrgyzstan, 2008 Costa Rica, 2010 Turkey, 2012 Morocco, 2014 Colombia, 2016 Myanmar, and 2018 Ghana). Many of the former course participants became project partner in ongoing research projects of German and European institutions.

The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023)