Socio-Economic Impacts moduleGEM's Socio-Economic Impacts module will allow for assessment of social and economic consequences of earthquakes, further and beyond those direct losses considered in the Risk module, with the goal to provide users with a wide array of methods useful to communicate impacts of seismic events. The module is under continious development and the exact contents of the global component(s) has not been defined yet. There have been various workshops and meetings with distinguished experts in both economic and social impact and representatives of stakeholders. These have lead to the current thinking of the development of one request for proposal that will give enough freedom to the proposing international consortium to identify a framework for SEI modelling. Once the Request for Proposal has been defined, a document explaining the goals of the SEI module and a draft RfP will be posted online for public commenting. The global earthquake model will include innovative methods for analysis and evaluation of the impacts of earthquakes on the short, medium and long term, on local and global scales. There will also be applications that build upon the model, such as a tool for cost-benefit analysis, allowing users to understand what effect certain mitigation actions, strengthening of the building stock for example, will have on the risk. Insight into earthquake effects over time will directly support decisions on short term needs after an event (relief, shelter), medium-term needs (recovery and reconstruction) and long term needs related to policies on risk mitigation. Currently the SEI-module is therefore envisioned as a toolbox that shall gather a comprehensive set of models, metrics, data and tools, to be organized following spatial, temporal and user principles under a standardized, clear and simple framework. |