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GEM and Singapore Nanyang Technological University – Institute of Catastrophe Risk Management (NTU-ICRM) have renewed its partnership to further work on seismic risk in China and the ASEAN region.

“The NTU-ICRM is a strategic partner for GEM - providing us an opportunity to engage at depth in earthquake hazard and risk assessment with our ASEAN stakeholders, using OpenQuake and related tools as the platform for knowledge transfer and model building. Our continued partnership can facilitate and accelerate the understanding of seismic risk at urban, national, regional and global levels.” - John Schneider, GEM Secretary General.

The collaboration leverages GEM expertise and the OpenQuake platform (software, models and databases) to assist ICRM in its risk assessment activities in Southeast Asia. Previous work focused on the Natural Catastrophe Data Analytics Exchange (NatCatDAX) project, as well as the ASEAN Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance (ADRFI) program. Under NatCatDAX, exposure maps were developed for three countries (Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand), with detailed, building-level exposure datasets for their respective capital cities Jakarta, Manila and Bangkok.

GEM’s role in this work has been to:

- Improve modelling capabilities for Nat Cat risks in SE Asia covering exposure and loss;

- facilitate better understanding of Nat Cat risks faced by ASEAN member states; and

- nurture ASEAN local expertise in the Nat Cat risk domain.

Joint workshops for East and Southeast Asian countries were conducted in Pavia, Italy, June 2019; Guangzhou, China, September 2019; Singapore, October 2019; and Hanoi, Vietnam, February 2020.

The new program will focus on multi-hazard risk assessment of the 10 ASEAN member states, addressing earthquake, flood, and typhoon hazards, and developing ex-ante risk financing solutions.

The ICRM was launched in 2010 with the vision to become Asia’s leading research institute in catastrophe risk management and to help those at risk worldwide in general and Asia in particular. The ICRM is the first multi-disciplinary risk management research institute of its kind in Asia and plays a lead role in NTU's integrative research efforts and its strategic vision of Sustainable Earth. Professor Pan Tso-Chen is the ICRM founding Executive Director.

“Our partnership with GEM has provided us a robust platform to connect with government agencies, academia and industry players from around the world with the aim of providing risk financing and risk reduction options as part of a comprehensive risk management strategy for the Southeast Asian region. We are looking forward to continuing our collaboration in the years ahead in order to mitigate catastrophic risk impacts on businesses and of the society as a whole.” Professor Pan Tso-Chien, NTU-ICRM.