Share

GEM recently concluded the PAPERS project – Piattaforma Analisi Pericolosità E Rischio Sismico – an initiative to strengthen scenario-based seismic hazard and risk assessment through a single operational framework that combines open models, high-performance computing, the OpenQuake Engine and a WebGIS environment.

The project is designed to support more integrated analysis of scenario hazard, exposure and risk, while also creating a platform structure that could be extended to any national context where the underlying data are available.

The initiative is organised around three main components: building the operational platform around the OpenQuake Engine, preloading the system with hazard, exposure and vulnerability models together with earthquake scenarios (including historical events and events from a stochastic catalogue) and building the capability for user-defined models to replace the preloaded models.

A key strength of the platform is the way it brings different types of information into a single environment. As shown in the project demonstration (see video below), users can explore multiple layers of exposure data at different administrative levels, including building counts, material types, occupancies, replacement costs, occupants and selected road infrastructure indicators. The platform also supports the selection of hypothetical earthquake events, the running of calculations and the creation of interactive maps showing outputs such as buildings beyond repair, economic losses and fatalities.

These features are intended to support a more operational and exploratory approach to seismic risk analysis. Rather than working only with static outputs, users can interact with the platform to examine how losses and impacts are distributed geographically and across different exposure categories.

The project was funded through a cascade grant under Italy’s High-Performance Computing, Big Data e Quantum Computing Research Centre. GEM considers the PAPERS computational infrastructure as a foundation that can support future applications in many other partner countries.