The Disaster Management Unit, one of the units of the Urban Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction Center at An-Najah University, participated in the international workshop titled “Urban Development and Update on the Basis of Seismic Hazards in the Middle East”. The workshop was organized between November 30^th and December 5^th in Ankara and Istanbul where experts from Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, Philippine, Japan, Iran, Algeria and Turkey participated.

Palestine was represented by Engineer Ra’fat Kittaneh, and Mr. Wala’ Aj’aj from the Disaster Management Unit at the Urban Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction Center at An-Najah.

The workshop was held through an invitation by the Middle East Technical University and the Center for Urban Planning and Protection at Kobe University in Japan. In the meeting, the participants reviewed and discussed the activities and procedures carried out by each country to prepare for natural disasters after analyzing the risks that each country faces based on its location and topology.

The participants also exchanged information and expertise and prepared a draft for an urban planning guide based on the seismic hazards that most countries face today. They also agreed to work on developing this guide to make more extensive and applicable in the world’s countries in general and in the Middle East region in particular.

As part of the workshop, the participants also visited a number of Turkish institutions and bodies that specialize in the field of disaster management and risk reduction in order to get acquainted with the Turkish experience in this field. Among the places that the participants visited was the Seismic Observatory in Ankara, in addition to a visit to one of the institutions that work in the field of seismic rehabilitation and reconstruction of old buildings in Turkey.

The participation of An-Najah University in such meetings comes as part of the Urban Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction Center’s activities to prepare and train its staff and give them the chance to stay up-to-date with the latest global development in the field of disaster management and risk reduction. The experience that this staff gets from such meetings would be very important in the development of the Palestinian society’s readiness to deal with disasters that might take place in the future.