The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) initiative aims to develop a global model of earthquake risk as an open source, community-driven project. In order to begin this in a structured way, a number of global components that cover the scientific modules of the model were defined and international consortia were invited to bid and lead these their development. These consortia define standards and best practice related to the methodologies used in seismic hazard and risk assessment and in particular the collection and storage of data needed therein. This paper introduces these global components and describes an open source platform for risk assessment OpenQuake that is being developed to provide access to and interaction with the proposed data and tools.