Share

During the last two months, GEM participated in various meetings across the globe. Here’s a list of GEM’s participation in some notable gatherings: GEM meets Community Safety Branch - Geoscience Australia in Canberra (July 25) GEM represented by John Schneider met with Geoscience Australia (GA) Community Safety Branch to discuss issues associated with earthquake hazard and risk modeling and to explore areas of mutual interest for potential collaboration.

GA is currently completing a new national earthquake hazard model for Australia and has provided assistance to the Government of Indonesia in developing a new national earthquake hazard model for Indonesia using OpenQuake. John also travelled to Perth Australia with Mark Edwards and Maruf Rahman to meet Western Australia Department of Fire and Emergency Services together with lifeline system (transportation, electric power and water distribution) providers as part of a new collaborative project on earthquake vulnerability and risk to lifelines in Western Australia.

GEM participates in US earthquake risk reduction discussion in London (July 7) GEM represented by Vitor Silva participates in discussion panel on earthquake risk model for the United States at Lloyds of London with RMS, AIR Worldwide, EPICentre UCL, Imperial College and Aon Benfield. The meeting held on July 7 in London was attended by around 160 participants. The panel discussion provided an opportunity for GEM to highlight the work recently completed by GEM, and funded by the California Seismic Safety Commission, on GEM’s OpenQuake risk model for the United States, which includes latest earthquake hazard model for California (UCERF3) as part of the USGS 2014 national hazard model. GEM meets FM Global in Boston (July 24) In Boston, USA GEM, represented by Marco Pagani, meets with FM Global to discuss global hazard modelling and the OpenQuake engine.

The focus of the discussions was on FM Global’s contribution to the development of a global earthquake fault database. GEM at earthquake symposium in Lenzburg, Switzerland (5-7 September) Marco Pagani delivered an invited presentation on earthquake hazard modeling in Europe at the Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment Workshop in Lenzburg, Switzerland. The workshop was convened by GEM sponsor ETH to review the state of the art and define future directions for earthquake hazard research in Europe. The workshop was attended by 150 leading experts on Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA) from around the globe. GEM at OASIS Modelling Conference in London (4-5 September) John Schneider was a guest at the first annual conference of the OASIS Loss Modellng Framework. OASIS is a consortium of organisations with common interests in developing and applying natural catastrophe risk models to insurance risk issues.

About 200 model developers, users and risk management professionals attended the conference. GEM global databases and OpenQuake modeling tools featured prominently in presentations and discussions of earthquake risk modeling developments and applications. Many participants expressed interest in having GEM risk models accessible through the OASIS platform.