Representatives from five Maltese and Sicilian organisations that are partners in a project entitled ‘Establishment of an integrated system of Italo-Maltese Civil Protection’ (SIMIT), met in Catania, Sicily, in July to discuss the progress of scientific work taking place as part of the project.

The €2.5 million project is mainly focused on creating an integrated civil protection plan for the region between of Sicily and Malta to forecast, prevent and mitigate geological hazards in high-risk areas such as the Strait of Sicily.

At the meeting, scientific results on geology, geophysics, geomorphology, geohazards and earthquake monitoring in the region, as well as methodologies developed for assessing the seismic vulnerability of buildings, were presented. In September the project’s operational phase will be launched. The islands of Lampedusa and Sicily will serve as test sites to evaluate the integrated plans through common exercises and emergency management.

The University of Malta is represented in the project by the Seismic Monitoring and Research Unit of the Department of Physics, the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering of the Faculty for the Built Environment and the Institute for Sustainable development and Climate Change.

The project is led by Sicily’s Department of Civil Protection, supported by the Italia-Malta Operational Programme 2007-2013.

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