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Suramericana S.A., an insurance company with presence in nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay), most of which have significant earthquake risk, will work with GEM to further enhance the understanding of seismic risk in the region. The project, which will run for two years to the end of 2021, continues the partnership with Suramericana which, over the past 6 years, has contributed significantly to GEM’s hazard and risk information and models in Latin America.

In the area of seismic hazard, the new project will focus on the implementation of site response analysis in the OpenQuake engine, which will enable GEM to implement Sura’s information on site conditions, and on the development of improved tools to reduce the uncertainty in the estimation of earthquake hazard in the region. In seismic risk, the project will focus on validation, testing and calibration of building vulnerability models, with a particular focus on high-rise structures, and on assessing losses due to business interruption and human fatalities.