The seventy-sixth Geological Congress of Türkiye, the most established and respected scientific organization in the field of Earth sciences in Türkiye since 1947, will be heldat the Cultural Center of the MTA General Directorate, between 15-19 April2024, with the main theme of "Disaster Resilient Cities".

Disasters arenatural, technological* or human-inducedevents that cause significant physical, economic and social losses, stopping* or interrupting normallife and human activities, for which the affected society has insufficient coping capacity.

Urban resilience against disasters is defined by the United Nations as "The ability of settlements, societies, and all systems that arelikely to be affected in the case of any type of danger/threat to have thenecessary resources to protect themselves, ensure the functioning of the system, restructure in a short time, and adapt to change and use the seresources effectively." A resilient city is defined as a city that isprepared to recover from any negative/undesirable event while maintaining its essential functions, structures, and identity as well as adapting and thrivingin the face of continual change. In this context, Urban Resilience requires identifying and assessing hazards and risks, reducing vulnerability, increasing resilience, adaptative capacity and emergency preparedness. It is evident that urbanresilience includes not only the structural durability and damage prevention,but also taking measures to ensure the sustainability of settlements and adaptto global events such as climate change.

Disasters that occuras a result of natural eventsor possible natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, floods, droughts and fires have unfortunately increased in recent years in our country and around the World, causing significant environmental, social and economic losses. In parallel with scientificand technological developments, studies on disaster management, risk assessment and disaster loss reduction are constantly being developed by national and international institutions and organizations. Despite these efforts, depending on the development levels of the countries, current practices cannot be shared equally and disaster damages cannot be reduced to the desired level. The February 6, 2023 Kahramanmaraþ earthquakes that occurred in Türkiye are veryconcrete examples. Fifty five percent of today`s World population lives incities, and this rate was 72.8% in our country by the end of 2022. Since economic, social, environmental and structural needs cannot be met to the extent required in parallel with rapid urbanization, our cities cannot with standnatural disasters and this results in significant losses.

In our 76^thGeological Congress of Türkiye, one of our primary objectives is to effectively communicate to society and decision-makers on the importance of disaster risk concept, strengthening disaster risk management, investing in disaster risk reduction efforts for urban resilience, enhancing and improving disaster preparedness foreffective intervention, damage reduction, and site selection for rehabilitation and reconstruction phases.

To ensure the successful execution of our 76^th Congress adhering to the standards of the Earthsciences community, your participation and support are essential. Additionally, we are pleased to acknowledge the eagerness of our fellow geoscientists tooffer their assistance in organizing special sessions, exhibitions, panels, technical excursions, and social events within the scope of the Congress.

Organizing Committee