ORIGINAL PAPER Geohazards assessment and mapping of some Balkan countries Betim Muc ¸o • Georgi Alexiev • Shyqyri Aliaj • Zenun Elezi • Bogdan Grecu • Neculai Mandrescu • Zoran Milutinovic • Mircea Radulian • Boyko Ranguelov • Defrim Shkupi Received: 29 June 2011 / Accepted: 3 April 2012 / Published online: 14 September 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract The assessment of geological hazard is a topic with significant interest for the Balkans. During the last decade of twentieth century, most of the countries in the region have embarked on the road of a hasty transitory period from totalitarian regimes to democracy. Development of free market economy has given rise to uncontrolled move- ment of people, fast construction of housing and facilities and unproportioned accumu- lation of population around and in big cities. Besides Greece, an old member of European Union, and two newcomers in the organization, Romania and Bulgaria, the other countries are all hoping to enter the Union as faster as they can. Many different candidate or full- fledged member country programs of European Community offer a lot of joint and cross- border projects for constructing road infrastructure and facilities. As development accelerates in the Balkans and given the intensive geohazard elements that this territory exhibits, it B. Muc ¸o (&) General Dynamics, IRIS Consultant, Rockville, MD, USA e-mail: betmuco@gmail.com G. Alexiev Institute of Geography, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria S. Aliaj Institute of Seismology, Academy of Sciences, Tirana, Albania Z. Elezi Seismological Institute, Prishtina, Kosovo B. Grecu Á N. Mandrescu Á M. Radulian National Institute for Earth Physics, Bucharest, Romania Z. Milutinovic Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology, Skopje, Macedonia B. Ranguelov Geophysical Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria D. Shkupi Albanian Association of Engineering Geology and Geoenvironment, Tirana, Albania 123 Nat Hazards (2012) 64:943–981 DOI 10.1007/s11069-012-0185-6