Socio-Economic Impact Module

GEM’s Social and Economic Impact Module (SEIM) constitutes one of the three main pillars, together with the Seismic Hazard and Seismic Risk Modules, of the Global Earthquake Model. Its main goal is to contribute to improving our understanding of social and economic impacts from seismic events.

The main objective of the SEIM is to provide the community with a set of methods for assessing, estimating and communicating impacts of earthquakes on variables that are deemed as representative of the social and economic system. Such methods will include ones that are commonly known and used by social scientists, natural scientists and practitioners in areas such as economic analysis, risk assessment, mitigation, planning and decision making (linked to earthquakes), but will also attempt to provide stakeholders with innovative solutions to improve the knowledge about the linkages between natural events, the economy and the society.

The work to be carried under the SEIM is expected to lead to the development of an engine; which is envisioned as a toolbox that shall gather a comprehensive set of models, metrics, data and tools, to be organized following overarching principles. These principles, in turn, will be defined together with the community, under a participatory framework.

The work will be carried out by an international consortium, following a call for proposals.

A draft of the RfP (plus background document) was posed online for online public commentary between 15 September and 15 November 2010. On 15 December 2010 GEM released the above mentioned call for proposals; the call has now been closed. Three proposals were received and are currently being peer-reviewed. Visit the RfP page to download the documents.