Varenna workshop report:
Operational earthquake forecasting and decision making

A workshop on Operational earthquake forecasting and decision making was convened in Varenna, Italy, on June 8-11, 2014, under the sponsorship of the EU FP 7 REAKT (Strategies and tools for Real-time EArthquake risK reducTion) project, the Seismic Hazard Center at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). The main goal was to survey the interdisciplinary issues of operational earthquake forecasting (OEF), including the problems that OEF raises for decision making and risk communication. The workshop was attended by 64 researchers from universities, research centers, and governmental institutions in 11 countries. Participants and the workshop agenda are listed in the appendix.
The workshop comprised six topical sessions struc- tured around three main themes: the science of opera- tional earthquake forecasting, decision making in a low-probability environment, and communicating haz- ard and risk. Each topic was introduced by a moderator and surveyed by a few invited speakers, who were then empaneled for an open discussion. The presentations were followed by poster sessions. During a wrap-up ses- sion on the last day, the reporters for each topical session summarized the main points that they had gleaned from the talks and open discussions. This report attempts to distill this workshop record into a brief overview of the workshop themes and to describe the range of opin- ions expressed during the discussions.