Romania’s geeks are mapping earthquake risk in EU’s highest-risk capital

Since January, Romania has banned renting apartments in buildings at risk in an earthquake. Using official data to map seismic risk “I’m personally very content with this move of forbidding renting in red dots,” said Marina Batog, co-founder at engineering-focused NGO Make Better. As a joint project of Code for Romania and Make Better NGO, they created the website “acasainsiguranta.ro”, which provides resources to understand seismic risk and how to act, individually and collectively. Aiming to “build technology to address societal issues”, Code for Romania emerged in late 2015, following the Colectiv nightclub fire in Bucharest, where 64 people died, explained its co-founder, Bogdan Ivanel. The Bucharest City Committee for Emergency Situations in 2022 estimated that roughly 23,000 buildings in Bucharest could be “significantly damaged” in a strong earthquake, including dozens of schools, universities and hospitals.