Earthquakes are the deadliest natural hazard. Developing tools and measures to reduce future human and economic losses is the aim of RISE. RISE stands for Real-time earthquake rIsk reduction for a reSilient Europe and is a three-year project financed by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission. It started in September 2019 and will end in May 2023. RISE is coordinated by ETH Zurich, it brings together 19 organisations from across Europe and five international partners.

Perhaps the most important, but also the most difficult questions that seismologists are asked: "What is the chance of a damaging earthquake happening in this area, and if it does, what are its likely effects?" This is the basis for operational earthquake forecasting (OEF) and operational earthquake loss forecasting (OELF). The answers will always have a lot of uncertainty because earthquakes cannot be predicted. However, we can sometimes tell that they are more likely in certain areas due to movements that have been detected in the earth's crust. Forecasts like this require careful, precise, honest and unambiguous communication - sometimes to people with little or no grounding in the geological principles underlying the information. They are not warnings, and they are not giving people a 'message' – telling them to do or not do something – they are more complex to communicate than that. How to best deal with this challenge? 13 best practice tips can guide you in communicating OEF.

Read more about earthquake forecast communication in this report!