The EUCENTRE-SERA Programme successfully held a workshop in June for the Balkan earthquake risk community. The workshop, held in Belgrade, was co-organized by SUZI-SAEE Seismic Risk Task Force (Srpsko udruženje za zemljotresno inženjerstvo-SUZI - Serbian Association for Earthquake Engineering-SAEE), and the Faculty of Engineering-Belgrade. GEM's Vitor Silva and Venetia Despotaki observed first hand how OpenQuake was being used in Bulgaria, Bosnia Herzegovina and North Macedonia.

Vitor presented GEM’s seismic risk framework and Venetia presented residential and non-residential exposure models for Europe with a focus on the Balkan region. The next SERA workshop is scheduled this September in Istanbul, Turkey where the European Risk Model would be released.

Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe (SERA) is a Horizon 2020-supported programme responding to the priorities identified in the topic INFRAIA-01-2016-2017 ‘Integrating Activities for Advanced Communities’. SERA involves 31 partners and 8 linked third parties in Europe.

GEM's contributions focus on taxonomy and exposure of residential, commercial and industrial buildings in Europe; physical vulnerability assessment for buildings; integrated earthquake risk analysis using the risk assessment framework and OpenQuake software established by the Global Earthquake Model.