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The Geological Survey of Canada in collaboration with the UBC Earthquake Engineering Research Facility and the GEM Foundation organized its first GEM OpenQuake training workshop in Vancouver, Canada from 11th - 13th April with the theme: “Earthquake Risk Modeling in Canada - from knowledge to action”.

Over 50 people with different backgrounds participated in the event including GEM’s Anirudh Rao who presented GEM and its current work, and co-facilitated a session on OpenQuake engine. “The OpenQuake workshop session was a big success. It opened several opportunities for future collaboration with Canada's leading seismic hazard scientists, structural engineers, risk mitigation experts from the City of Vancouver, and electric utility agencies concerned about seismic risk to their assets and convinced many participants to switch to OpenQuake after experiencing first hand the engine’s computational capability,” Anirudh Rao, GEM Physical Risk Engineer and lead OpenQuake trainer at the 3-day event.

Dr. Murray Journeay - GSC/NRCan risk modelling expert and longtime GEM collaborator, facilitated the workshop designed for risk modelers working in areas of both fundamental and applied science - and those who were interested in using outputs of risk assessments to inform disaster resilience planning at local and regional scales in Canada.

The event presented an overview of earthquake risk assessment activities in British Columbia, followed by a two-day interactive workshop to explore the analytic capabilities of the OpenQuake engine and Platform. In particular, workshop objectives included:

- Explore GEM's risk datasets, models and tools;

- Present GEM’s Risk Modeller's Toolkit to derive fragility and vulnerability models;

- Perform probabilistic seismic risk analysis, and scenario damage and loss estimation using the OpenQuake-engine;

- Contribute to GEM’s Global Risk Modelling effort.On the last day, Dr. Murray Journeay (below, left) was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Geological Survey of Canada for his work throughout his career in promoting earthquake risk awareness and reduction in Canada, and for his efforts in recent years in helping Canada become a public partner of GEM.

Canada became an official member of the GEM Foundation in December 2017.