Global Liquefaction Hazard

The first global view of earthquake-triggered liquefaction

Description

The Global Liquefaction Map shows the annualised rate of exceeding a liquefaction spatial extent (LSE) of 20% — a threshold indicative of severe surface manifestation. The map is provided at a spatial resolution of 30 arc-seconds (~ 1 km at the equator). Seismic hazard data is integrated with geospatial liquefaction models, accounting for epistemic uncertainty to estimate global liquefaction hazard. The map is computed using the event-based calculator of the OpenQuake Engine, an open- source software for hazard and risk assessment developed by the GEM Foundation, which aggregates earthquake impacts across a set of scenarios into a long-term annualised metric. This dataset is currently available to download as a Raster, Poster and PNG file.

A global dataset of roads from OpenStreetMap (OSM) has been overlain with GEM's v2026.1 Global Maps of Seismic Hazard and Liquefaction (see the Geoviewer link on the right) and the results in terms of the top 15 countries and territories according to road length, roads exposed to high ground shaking (PGA>0.3g), and roads exposed to severe liquefaction are also summarised in the downloadable poster.

How to cite this work

Liquefaction Data:

Todorović, L., Costa, C., Rao, A.& Silva, V. (2026). Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Global Liquefaction Hazard Map (Version v2026.1) [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21650026

Poster:

Todorović L, Costa C, Rao A, Silva V (2026). Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Global Map of Liquefaction and Road Exposure (version 2026.1), https:// doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20208650

Available Versions

A raster file of the global liquefaction hazard is available for direct download under a CC BY-NC-SA license. A PDF poster, as well as a high-resolution PNG of liquefaction hazard, is available for direct download under a CC BY-SA license. If your use case does not meet the open license requirements, or if you are interested in obtaining the underlying dataset as a shapefile, please submit a request in our system by clicking on the "License Request", where a specific license will be provided, depending on the use case.

License information

This product is available under multiple Creative Commons licenses (depending on the format), which may require some of the following:

Attribution (you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made)
Non-commercial (you may not use the material for commercial purposes)
ShareAlike (derivatives created must be made available under the same license as the original)

Any deviation from these terms incur in license infringement and requires a license agreement that must be made tailored to your use case, in such instance please click on "License Request".