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GEM presented research on seismic design, earthquake impact assessment and vulnerability modelling at the 13th U.S. National Conference on Earthquake Engineering (13NCEE), held in Portland, Oregon, from 13 to 17 July 2026. The conference was organised by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI).

GEM’s contributions ranged from worldwide seismic hazard calculations to a neighbourhood-scale case study, addressing building performance, loss estimation and recovery planning.

For the ASCE Earthquake Loads Overseas (AELO) collaboration with USGS, Kendra Johnson, GEM’s Senior Seismic Hazard Scientist, presented an OpenQuake-based workflow for calculating seismic design parameters for locations outside the United States.

Anirudh Rao, GEM’s Seismic Risk Modelling Lead, discussed how testing models against historical earthquake events, empirical data and independent models helps evaluate their reliability.

Vitor Silva, GEM’s Head of Risk Engineering, presented a case study exploring how a digital twin of a Lisbon neighbourhood could combine sensor recordings and building information with OpenQuake to estimate damage, losses and downtime. The approach was demonstrated and tested using stochastic simulations and nonlinear structural analyses, examining how sensor observations could inform post-earthquake impact assessments.

Al Mouayed Bellah Nafeh, GEM’s Physical Vulnerability Lead, presented the new global vulnerability model, which accounts for structural systems, nonstructural components and building contents to support more detailed estimates of financial losses.

Karim Aljawhari, GEM’s Physical Vulnerability Modeller, examined the embodied carbon associated with earthquake damage, repair and reconstruction in Europe, adding an environmental perspective to discussions of retrofitting and mitigation.

Together, the presentations connected GEM’s global hazard and vulnerability modelling with seismic design calculations, local impact assessments and estimates of the financial and environmental costs of recovery.