From 2006 to 2015, Europe experienced 21 earthquake-related disasters that resulted in 1.049 fatalities, more than 18 billion Euros in economic losses, and affected 284.000 people. In the last years, risk awareness and perception towards seismic threats have increased among the public and policy makers in many European countries. These European countries have also understood how important it is to help mitigate the seismic risks, by making the best possible use of the potential of earthquake forecasting and early warning as well as by responding rapidly after an earthquake.

TURNkey (Towards more Earthquake-resilient Urban Societies through a Multi-sensor-based Information System enabling Earthquake Forecasting, Early Warning and Rapid Response actions) is a three-year EU-funded project led by Norsar involving 20 other partners from 10 European countries. The overall goal is to link together theoretical systems with practical use in Europe to improve seismic resistance before, during and after a harmful earthquake.

Finished projects 
The end of the summer coincided with the closure of several project activities and the dissemination of the achieved results. An important stage to demonstrate the TURNkey developments was the ESC2021 (37th General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission), held online from the 19th to the 24th of September 2021. In particular, TURNkey and RISE (Real-time earthquake rIsk reduction for a resilient Europe) jointly organised Session 18 "Towards operational forecasting of earthquakes and early warning capacity for more resilient societies", where the great synergy between the two European projects was shown once again. 

Another important dissemination activity carried out in the last months is the TURNkey participation in the Service1 - Module B (Helping projects from the portfolio to design and execute a portfolio dissemination plan) of HRB (Horizon Result Booster). This service takes place after Service 1 - Module A (Identifying and creating the portfolio of R&I project results), which ended in June 2021, and will last for about three months. It will enable the target Project Group (PG) to have professional support in designing an effective and combined dissemination plan. 

Both Work Package 3 (Assessment of ground motions before, during and after an earthquake), Work Package 4 (Physical and systemic vulnerability estimation for rapid loss prediction updating), and Work Package 5 (Decision Support Systems (DSSs) for real-time (OEF and EEW) and near real-time (RRE) disaster prevention and risk communication) were completed at the end of September 2021, and marked a milestone in the project. Two of the interesting results from these Work Packages are presented in the October 2021 newsletter.

The next milestone for the project will be to deliver the final version of the TURNkey platform at the end of January 2022. The TURNkey platform will provide acceptable results and assist actors in taking various risk reduction measures before, during and after a devastating earthquake. In the last months of the project and until May 2022 (when the project ends), the focus will be on testing and validating the platform with those who have different areas of responsibility within first aid, critical infrastructure, and business organizations.