Management of environmental risks associated with landfills in seismically active regions in the New Independent States of Central Asia (NISMIST)

Overall Description of the project
NISMIST is a research project focusing on assessment of risk and development of remedial recommendations for landfills (municipal tips) located in highly active seismic regions of the New Independent States (NIS). The NIS countries involved in this 36-month project are: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. The full consortium includes partners from Germany and France, with the project being coordinated from Austria.

Environmental Risks
Municipal tips and landfills generally, pose a high environmental risk to soil, water and air. When they are located in a seismically active zone, the risk to soil and water is significantly increased. Little is known about the behaviour of landfills under earthquake conditions, although it is clear that rapid contamination of the soil and water is a consequential result, especially if there is little or no barrier between the landfill content and the surrounding natural materials.

Funding and Duration
The NISMIST project (Contract 516732) officially begun on 01.08.2006 and will run for 36 months until 31.07.2009. The project is funded by the EU Sixth Framework Programme within the International Cooperation (INCO) especially for Russia and New Independent States (Call identifier FP6-2003-INCO-Russia + NIS-1).