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More than 60 individuals were in attendance in the virtual meeting held on November 27, 2020 – Secretariat reporting, and December 3-4, 2020 – core meeting. The attendees included almost all of the voting members, non-voting members, associate members, advisory board, guests and GEM Secretariat.

Sponsor feedback and priorities

Representatives from sponsors and partners AIR, Eucentre, PartnerRe, MunichRe, Guy Carpenter, SwissRe, Italy-DPC, USAID, Nepal-NSET, Japan-NIED and TEM gave short presentations on their priorities and feedback mainly focusing on technical support for hazard and risk modelling tasks. The Secretariat is set to incorporate the comprehensive sponsor input into the 2021 work plan and strategy development.

Products and services

In terms of products and services, discussions focused on the release of the social vulnerability and resilience maps, the release of the models from the global mosaic, and the release of commercial models on Nasdaq and Touchstone platforms.

The Secretariat will follow up on the release of social vulnerability and resilience (SVR) maps with a virtual workshop to develop collaboration networks and potential funding for current and future SVR work.

User demand for GEM products will be assessed in order to guide further development and promotion, and a schedule to release the remaining hazard and risk models from global mosaic is set for 25 January. A planning workshop will be held to assess the need and approach for financial risk model development is scheduled for 4-5 and 11 February 2021.

Long term strategy

The final session of the meeting focused on long-term strategy where the discussion focused on sponsor and partner perspectives on earthquake model development, inclusion of other perils and organizational sustainability. The Secretariat will convene a strategy task force to develop the long-term GEM strategy in the second quarter of 2021.

New representatives

The Secretariat presented the following new Sponsors and representatives, and were subsequently approved by the Board:

• new voting representative for Taiwan Earthquake Model (TEM), Bruce Shyu of NTU, Taiwan;

• new voting representative for New Zealand, Gary Wilson of GNS;

• new Small Business (Startup) Advisor Sponsor SafeHub with Andy Thompson as non-voting representative; and

• renewed sponsorship of Partner Re as Advisor Sponsor with Paul Della-Marta as non-voting representative.