On Thursday 25 May, a seminar entitled “2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake: Overview of One of the Deadliest Seismic Event in History” held by Giulia Jole Sechi, PhD student in “role of digital technology in informal settlements construction” at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Barcelona), will take place in room B.6.1 (Building 14 – Nave, piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 32).

It will also be possible to follow the event online via the following link.

Abstract

A devastating earthquake of 7.8 on the Richter scale hit Southern Türkiye in the early hours of 6 February with its epicenter. The earthquake affected an area approximately 500km long, where almost 16 million people reside including about 1.8 million Syrian refugees. A second major earthquake hit the region after 9 hours with 7.5 magnitude, causing further destruction of damaged buildings. Approximately 2.4 million people are currently living in temporary shelters, the victims are more than 50,000. We will present a gallery of photos and videos from the field whose aim is to outline the main damage types and structural failures observed. We will also outline the damage and repair methodology that is being implemented by the local government, international organisations and Miyamoto International to accelerate the return home of internally displaced people.

Speaker’s biosketch

Giulia Jole Sechi graduated in 2013 in civil structural engineering from Politecnico di Milano with a thesis partially written in Peru on earth dwellings reinforced with used car tyre straps. She then lived two years in Chad and three years in New Zealand, where she worked on the 2010-2011 Christchurch and 2016 Kaikoura earthquakes. Giulia also worked in Nepal with UNDP for the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, before going to Tanzania and India. She has worked as structural engineering consultant for Miyamoto International on the 2021 Haiti earthquake response and is now Corporate Structural Engineer at Miyamoto International. As part of her job she has been deployed in Turkey right after the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake. She is also currently pursuing her PhD on the role of digital technology in informal settlements construction at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona.