Statement on the Haiti Earthquake

We would like to express our personal condolences to the Haitian people as we watch the tragedy in Haiti unfold. When one is working on the construction of a Global Earthquake Model, seeing such destruction makes the need for a risk assessment model once more painfully clear.

Even though an initiative like GEM finds its limits in areas where institutional infrastructures are lacking and where life is dominated by surviving to the next day, the information that GEM will produce can in fact contribute to improved decision-making and awareness in all levels of society.

Especially in underserved areas such as Haiti where currently no accurate and transparent earthquake risk information exists or where such information is inaccessible, GEM will make sure that organisations, (local) governments and individuals have access to its state-of-the-art risk assessment software and tools as a necessary first step towards taking mitigation action. Actions such as systematic building strengthening, the creation of insurance pools and other risk transfer mechanisms like micro-insurance, but also adaption of urban and rural planning policies; actions that are based on cost-benefit analyses and profound insight in the risk in a specific area or in several areas. Development of policies and programmes for earthquake risk mitigation take time and have to go hand in hand with raising risk awareness. A clear user-interface will ensure outputs are understandable to all types of users, so that public and private actors can deal with the question on how to face earthquake risk, how to raise awareness and can interact with each other to find sustainable solutions. GEM will also train local professionals in the use of the model to contribute to this process.
The value of GEM hence lies in empowering people to take informed decisions on the risk they face, while at the same time providing institutions and organisations with the tools to adapt or develop policies, products and campaigns that serve these people.

The events in Haiti have given us even more motivation to continue the mission we set ourselves out to accomplish and we hope to get many more countries, organisations and individuals from all over the world involved in GEM to be able to contribute as much as possible to reduction of the toll that earthquakes take.