Newsletter - April 2010 Issue

While GEM's main (scientific) programme is continuously being pushed forward, an equally tireless effort is made on extending GEM's cooperative public-private partnership to include more participants, necessary not only to ensure economic feasibility of the initiative, but also to guarantee that the views and needs of as many stakeholders as possible are fully met by GEM. We are therefore proud to announce the adhesion of FM Global as a platinum sponsor, and, within weeks, of Australia and New Zealand as public participants.

FM Global, a leading insurance company that supports risk management solutions, is GEM's first private sponsor, joining the five private founders (MunichRE, Zurich Financial, AIR Worldwide, Willis, Eucentre) that took the bold stance of funding GEM right from its inception. With the upcoming adhesion of New Zealand and Australia as Public Participants, and that of a number of other countries that are also likely to join in the near future, GEM will now also benefit from more representative membership of nations from around the globe.

The number of institutions and individuals actively involved in GEM's technical activities also keeps on growing (below you find a list of some of the institutions directly involved in the Hazard Global Components), which continues to underline the fact that GEM is indeed a truly global community effort.

From 26th-29th April the GEM1 Final Review Meeting took place at the GEM 'headquarters', featuring the presence of 56 participants. The 12 members of the Model Advisory Group (MAG) and all other participants reviewed and discussed both the GEM1 pilot project that ended on March 31st, as well as the way forward, including issues such as integration between Global Components, Regional Programmes and Model Facility, software development and release, evaluation and testing of results and products, user needs and use cases, etc etc. The MAG overall concluded that the targeted proof-of-concept has been achieved by GEM1, paving the way for the very many activities that are still ahead of us, and which will be engaging hundreds of researchers from around the globe. A detailed review report is now being assembled by the MAG, and will then be submitted to both the Scientific and Governing Boards.

Below we provide a short overview of the international consortia that have been selected to carry out the work for the Hazard Global Components, after the international peer review process we described in a previous newsletter. From May the website will provide a full overview of the consortia and their working plans.

Global Instrumental Seismic Catalogue: After collection and critical review of existing global instrumental catalogues, the consortium working on this component will develop a methodological approach for a new catalogue and subsequently compile it. The consortium consists of six international experts, backed up by their teams, and is led by the International Seismological Centre (ISC, UK) with intensive interaction with IASPEI.

Global Active Faults Database: The main task of the international consortium within this global components is the compilation of a global database of active faults, that will also cover areas not covered before, building upon projects such as the ‘Major Active Faults of the World’ programme (1994-2004). The consortium includes a substantial number of international experts, who are often linked to national institutions, including GNS (New Zealand), Earth Observatory of Singapore (Singapore), and Universidad Nacional de San Luis (Argentina). Local researchers in uncovered areas will be involved as well.

Global Geodetic Strain Rate Model: The creation of a comprehensive and uniform model for geodetic strain rates will be pursued by the consortium, which will take it upon itself to critically review all global and regional studies since 1994 and will significantly update the Global Strain Rate Model of 2004. The tasks will be overseen by principal investigators from University of Nevada (USA), Ecole Normale Supérieure (France), Chinese Earthquake Administration (China), University of California (USA), UNAVCO (USA).

Global Ground Motion Prediction Equations: The main goal of this project is the development of a harmonized suite of ground motion prediction equations (GMPE), built on the most recent advancements in the field. The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) is leading this global component, which will feature also the active participation of 23 international experts.

Global Historical Earthquake Database and Catalogue: A revision of the selected project is still ongoing, though it should be soon concluded. Further news in the upcoming newsletter.

As announced in the previous newsletter, the 2010 Outreach Meeting  is coming up, featuring one and a half days of presentations and proof-of-concept demonstrations of the global earthquake risk model. The event will also feature a session on GEM’s private participants' perspective, will highlight how the global community is working together to create a first version of the model that will be accessible to users through portals and software applications, and will be closed with a talk from the Director of the USGS. More information on the Outreach Meeting 2010 can be found on the dedicated web-page.

In tandem with the GEM Outreach Meeting, the Understanding Risk (UR) conference will be held, to support knowledge exchange between professionals involved in disaster risk assessment and to create a global community that will continue to facilitate innovation in disaster risk assessment, serving a larger community in turn. GEM has its own group and discussion section on the UR community website - as can be seen on the image on your right - and we invite you all to sign up and start discussions; to find out what your thoughts are regarding GEM, what questions you think GEM should address, what your expectations are... Follow this link to do so.

The June issue of this newsletter will report extensively on the event.