Global Change Observatory Central Asia GCO
The Central Asian region (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and the eastern parts of China) is an ideal natural laboratory for studying the interaction of earthquake and climate-controlled hazards and their impact. Very often, natural catastrophes have a triggering effect leading to cascade phenomena and a simple single risk analysis procedure might be insufficient to provide end-users and stakeholders with realistic scenarios. This strategy characterises the GCO-CA as a unique geohazard-georisk observatory. The GCO-CA relies on instrumentation, such as the HyMet regional monitoring network, the Central-Asian Real Time Earthquake Monitoring Network (CAREMON), the Bishkek Vertical Array, and the High Elevation Glacial Station “Gottfried Mertzbacher".
All of the above mentioned activities have been carried out in cooperation with several national and international institutes and contribute to ACROSS. In particular, we created the cross-border scientific “Consortium for Earthquake Risk Reduction” (COSERICA), which consists of eleven Central Asian partners cooperating in undertaking seismic risk mitigation in the region.
