The primary (IT) goal of GEM is to extend the scope, but not necessarily the state-of-the-art, of risk and hazard calculation, as related to earthquakes. In order to achieve this, we expect our IT architecture to be: • Open (Data, Source, Protocols, Standards, etc.) • Pluggable (Modular, Loosely-Coupled) • Dynamic (Fault-tolerant, Distributed, Constantly Updated)