The municipality of Gjilan/Gnjilane and the team and consultants of Municipal Spatial Planning Support Programme organized a workshop focused on the safety of public buildings in this city and solutions which could be put in place to reinforce these buildings and make them more resistant to earthquakes. The workshop was attended by the representatives of Municipal Assembly of Gjilan/Gnjilane, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the representatives of the MuSPP partner municipalities. In his welcoming speech, Masayuki Yokota, expert on Disaster and Risk Assessment Management, described the role of this unit within MuSPP. The focus of the unit is on the identification of flood prone areas along rivers Nerodime in Ferizaj/Urosevac and Stanishorka in Gjilan/Gnjilane. Another field of interest is the resistance of public buildings to earthquakes. The presentation by Professor Zoran Milutinovic, Ph.D. from the Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology in Skopje, Macedonia (ISIIS) was mainly focused on the reduction of the causalities in case of earthquakes. The presented case reflected Skopje earthquake in 1963 and the resulting fatality figures. It was emphasized that Gjilan/Gnjilane is in the same of earthquake zone as Skopje. The presentation related to the inspection done in cooperation with municipal officers and MuSPP on the actual situation of vulnerability of educational facilities in Gjilan/Gnjilane. The inspection was conducted in the  University of Prishtina Faculty of Education, and 10 primary and secondary schools including: “Arberia”, “Selami Halaqi”, “Zenel Hajdini”, “Rexhep Elmazi”, “Thimi Mitko”, “Ardhmeria-1”, “Musa Zajmi”, “Mehmet Isai”,"Bora Stankovic” and "Emin Duraku".

At the end of the presentation it was concluded that none of the inspected facilities were earthquake resistant as they were constructed during the pre-Seismic Design Code period (1965). Moreover, the inspected buildings of massive masonry structural systems are not constructed as seismic resistant, thus they are conceptually and structurally unfit for the seismic environment in which they exist. None of the facilities comply with safety standards for intended use, requiring safety coefficient 1.5 times larger relative to other, e.g. residential building uses. The project on reinforcement of the public facilities is the joint project of Municipal Spatial Planning Support Programme and Municipal Assembly of Gjilan/Gnjilane and it will cost around 100,000 euro, co-funded by both parties.