site.btaBurgas University Joins Project to Boost Earthquake Emergency Response in Black Sea Basin

A project on strengthening and promoting earthquake emergency response in the Black Sea Basin region was launched in Bucharest, the Burgas State University (BSU) said on Tuesday. The project, called SPEER-A, will be implemented under the 2021 - 2027 Interreg VI-B NEXT Black Sea Basin Programme.

The leading partners of the project are Burgas State University, Bolu Regional Administration (Romania), Pella Municipality (Greece) and the Directorate for Disaster and Emergency Management of Turkiye. The project manager is BSU Vice-Rector Prof. Irena Markovska, while Assoc. Prof. Nikola Todorov, Head of the Department of Ecology and Environmental Protection at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, will act as the coordinator.

The Black Sea Basin region is seismic and at the same time faces insufficient preparation and coordination between local authorities and research communities in effectively responding to earthquake disasters, the university's press centre stressed. The project will develop a virtual reality laboratory (VR Lab) that will present data related to the characteristics of earthquakes, in an innovative way through a VR environment.

The project team of the university will also develop an original mobile application aimed at mitigating the consequences of earthquakes and informing and assisting users in effective response in case of earthquakes. A report on seismic risk assessment in the Black Sea basin region will be prepared as well. The BSU will conduct three training events for volunteers with 50 participants each and three educational sessions in schools, with at least 100 students being trained in each session.

The SPEER-A project has a total budget of over EUR 750,000, with the implementation period being 28 months. During the implementation period, BSU will organize a joint transnational scientific conference with the participation of all partners.