Newsletter - August 2010 Issue

Following the thorough IT-review conducted in June, which involved 17 experts from around the world with extensive expertise on open-source projects, an Agile Framework development process, using web 2.0 tools, has now been adopted at GEM's Model Facility. The reorganisation effort is being led by Joshua McKenty (formerly Chief Architect of NASA's Nebula project) and features a first milestone set for January 2011 when a first sandbox version of GEM's integrated risk engine will be released, as recommended during the discussions at the recent Outreach Meeting.

Hannover Re, one of the world's leading reinsurance groups, is closely concerned with the assessment of natural hazards and in this context analyses the frequency and magnitude of, and the risk from, earthquakes. We are thus very pleased and proud to announce that Hannover Re has become a platinum sponsor of the GEM Foundation. Through this sponsorship, Hannover Re will not only support the development of a global earthquake risk model, but also intends to promote earthquake hazard and risk research in general.

At the end of September GEM, and following a thorough revision process triggered by the MAG review in late Spring, GEM will release the GEM1 technical reports, which summarize the main achievements of this pilot project. An Executive Summary will explain the overall goals and results of the latter, whilst domain-specific reports on Hazard, Risk and IT will describe the activities of the GEM1 teams involved in each of these three areas. A news item will be released on GEM's homepage when the reports will be available.

The Risk Requests for Proposals that GEM launched at the start of 2010 resulted in 14 proposals being submitted by international consortia comprising more than 70 organisations and hundreds of experts. After a thorough review process that involved 20 external peer-reviewers plus the Scientific and Governing Board members, five consortia were selected and are now expected to start in October 2010 the corresponding activities on the creation of global risk models, standards, frameworks and databases (further information on each of these five global components, will soon be made available in here):
Ontology and Taxonomy: AGORA, DPRI, PEER, WHE-EERI
Global Consequences Database: CAR, CRED, ERN-AL, GNS, KOERI, Kyoto University, Munich RE, SPA Risk, USGS
Global Exposure Database: Univ. Pavia, CIESIN-Colombia-Univ., IES-CEA, IGP-CEA, ImageCat, JRC, UN-HABITAT, USGS
Global Vulnerability Estimation Methods: Univ. Colorado, Cath. Univ. of Chile, Geoscience Australia, EERI, Stanford Univ., UCL, Univ. Bath, USGS, Willis
Inventory Data Capture Tools: ImageCat, BGS, CAR, CEDIM, DLR, OpenGeo, Univ. Nottingham, Univ. Pavia, SPA Risk, Stanford Univ., WAPMERR

Towards the end of this year GEM will release a Request for Proposals related to its Socio-Economic Impact Global Component. As usual, however, before such a call is released, we will be eagerly seeking to to obtain feedback from as many as possible experts, decision-makers and other stakeholders who have an interest in social and economic consequences of earthquakes. To this end, an online review will be open to the community from 15 September - 15 November. Do participate and disseminate this public commentary exercise.

- SHARE collaborators will convene various sessions at the ECEE and ESC conferences in August/September
- A 2nd call for city scenario proposals in the Middle-East has been released by EMME
- Operational Manager positions, funded by GEM, have been opened at the sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Caribbean Regional Programmes
- Planning meeting and iterations continue in many other regions, such as North, Central and South Asia, South-East Asia and Oceania, North Africa