Seismic Hazards Training Course at AUCA

Seismic Hazards Training Course at AUCA

December 2, 2021

On November 3rd, students and faculty of the Applied Geology department joined the Kyrgyz Seismic Hazard Seminar taught by Prof. Ray Weldon from Oregon State University (OSU).

The workshop is organized as part of a Central Asia University Partnerships Program (UniCEN) program that provides grants for universities in Central Asia.
Our students undergo three weeks of practical training in seismic hazard modeling as part of the project. As a practical work, the city of Bishkek and the Issyk-Ata tectonically active fault was examined in more detail.

As Prof. Ray Weldon has said: The Kyrgyzstan seismic hazards workshop will begin this week on November 3rd at 8:00 am for those in Kyrgyzstan (November 2nd at 7:00 pm US West Coast time), and we are excited to start this short hazards course with all of us.
Also, the project title: Characterizing Bishkek' s seismic hazard as a training exercise for Central Asian and American students and educators.  
I will teach a short course with my Kyrgyz collaborators at the American University of Central Asia and the Kyrgyz Institute of Seismology, which will cover Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis and produce a seismic hazard microzonation map for Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, as the class project that the Kyrgyz government will use for seismic hazard mitigation efforts.
This course will be conducted at AUCA and will train American and Central Asian students and modernize the expertise of my Kyrgyz colleagues. In addition, they work on topics related to seismic hazard. ​
Overall Goals: 
Teach Kyrgyz/Central Asian students seismic hazard analysis and provide tools applicable to problems of interest. Review existing seismic hazard work on the Bishkek area by reading existing papers/reports and having some of the authors present and discuss their work. Make recommendations of what additional work needs to be done and perhaps even do some of this work!
Associate Prof. Zheenbek Kulenbekov said: This training project course is interesting for our department students, specialists of Institute Seismology, NAS KR, and Oregon State University's students. This course content is mainly related to Issyk-Ata fault issues and seismic hazards, an excellent example for our faculty members and students. All attendees are excited to have this training course, which is implemented in this field at AUCA.
Mambetov Aliaskar, AGEO senior student: My name is Aliaskar. I am a bachelor's student at the American University in Central Asia. I am a senior student in the Department of Applied Geology. From the beginning of this semester, I started writing my thesis on the topic "Geographic analysis of the seismic environment of the Issyk-Ata fault." The training you gave us was very excellent. It talked about the Issyk-Ata fault and its probable outcomes.
I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers of our training and the professors and authors of the presentation. This is the first time I practiced this kind of training where we watched the work done by scientists in our field and could discuss with the professors and openly express our thoughts. For myself, I learned a lot of helpful information that I will take into account when writing my thesis. I believe that such practice will be beneficial for students since students mainly study theories and they do not have enough exercise. It is this type of activity that I think would be a bridge from theory to practice. That is, we did not get practice here, but we studied practical work. I believe this will prepare students, especially senior students, to learn approaches to solving global problems. I also noticed that I was more serious about the idea that it increases responsibility because we, along with our professors and other authoritative people in this area, thought and analyzed views on an equal footing.

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American University of Central Asia
7/6 Aaly Tokombaev Street
Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic 720060

Tel.: +996 (312) 915000 + Еxt.
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