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(updated November 16, 2020)

In February, GEM became an institutional member of the Industry and Users Board (IUB) of the ChEESE consortium (Center of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth (ChEESE; www.cheese-coe.eu).

The ChEESE Project Supervisory Board officially approved on the meeting held on October 6th ,2020, the entry of GEM Foundation as member of the Industry and Users Board (IUB) of the Project. The project develops several Pilot Demonstrators oriented to society on critical aspects of geohazards like hazard assessment, urgent computing, and early warning.

The ChEESE, a European infrastructure project coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), is establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE) in the domain of Solid Earth; targeting the preparation of codes and workflows for the upcoming pre-Exascale (2020) and Exascale (2022) supercomputers.

One important part of the CoE is the Industry and Users Board (IUB), which at present gathers 22 companies, international institutions and organizations. Recognizing GEM’s work in the seismic hazard analysis domain using the OpenQuake engine, ChEESE expanded its current Board to include the GEM Foundation.

The role of the IUB is to provide feedback on ChEESE project results and to participate in meetings during the life of the project, and during the General Assemblies.

“As coordinator of the project I am very glad to welcome GEM to IUB ChEESE. I am looking forward to GEM’s expertise and advice on the potential usability of ChEESE results as services for civil protection and private initiatives,” Dr. Arnau Folch Duran, Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), Spain.

Dr. Duran further added that the mutual benefit of the collaboration lies in the active exchange of developments in the fields of seismology, volcanology and tsunami hazards, in particular, in works that are related to high performance computing.

“We have working relationships with many of the organizations on the IUB and we welcome the opportunity to become better connected through ChEESE. This will be a good opportunity for GEM to learn how we might contribute to and leverage ChEESE modelling capabilities for national and international civil protection and private initiatives,” John Schneider, Secretary General, GEM Foundation.

Project partners on seismological, tsunami and volcano hazard include INGV in Rome, ETH Zurich, IPGP, CNRS, the Icelandic Meteorological Office, the University of Malaga, the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, the supercomputing centers of BSC, CINECA, HLRS Stuttgart, and LMU/TUM in Munich, amongst others.