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The Global Earthquake Model Foundation (GEM) in cooperation with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), successfully conducted a 2-day Vulnerability and Loss Estimation Workshop in Pavia, Italy from 3-4 April 2017. The objective of the workshop was to discuss various issues in vulnerability analysis to reduce scientific uncertainties and bias in the different approaches for fragility derivation, as well exchange ideas on how these results could be validated and verified.

The workshop hopes that the discussions around these issues will also contribute to Sendai’s first priority action: understanding disaster risks. More than 60 participants attended the first day which included presentations by several international experts such as Jack Baker of Stanford University, USA who presented on the trade-offs in regional versus site-specific ground motion selection for vulnerability assessment, Sinan Akkar from Bogazici University, Turkey on ideas and challenges in ground motion selection; and Kyriazis Pitilakis of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece on Vulnerability assessment of buildings exposed to seismically induced slope displacements.

In addition, about 30 participants from around the world joined day 1 of the workshop remotely, which was streamed over the Internet. On the second day, group discussions focused on the limitations, challenges, and future directions for loss estimation and vulnerability modeling. Key recommendations from the workshop are still being finalized and will be shared to the public through GEM’s website once completed.