0. Overview

GEM was formed in 2009 as a non-profit foundation in Pavia, Italy, funded through a public-private sponsorship with the vision to create a world that is resilient to earthquakes. GEM is funded by public and private institutions globally, and is advised by many international organizations (https://www.globalquakemodel.org/partners).

 

GEM is also recognized by the UN as an NGO, operating under UN guidelines for a humanitarian organization. GEM’s mission is to become one of the world’s most complete sources of risk resources and a globally accepted standard for earthquake risk assessment. Further, GEM aims to ensure that its products are applied broadly in disaster risk management/reduction and its services are available and accessible to public, private and academic institutions worldwide.

 

GEM is now broadening its range of products and services for the benefit of the disaster risk management and reduction community. Open and free distribution of data, models and tools will continue to be at the core of GEM’s work, and GEM will further strengthen its efforts to increase their availability and accessibility.

 

1. Objective

The objective of the GEM Products and Services Strategy is to continue to make information freely and openly available; while at the same time assuring the sustainability of the organization. Moving forward, GEM will leverage its capabilities, tools, and data to broaden its range of products and services in order to better meet the demands of data and model providers and users, and the DRR community in general.

 

As part of this strategy, GEM will soon be offering value-added products for a fee, which aims to address primarily the needs of risk financing/insurance and infrastructure/engineering sectors for products such as risk models for developing countries that can readily be used to tailor-fit risk financing solutions and building/infrastructure risk reduction measures.

 

Value-added products will also be available for free for public-good, non-commercial applications. In turn, the revenue generated from product fees will be reinvested to maintain GEM’s core capabilities, with an emphasis on providing support to developing countries.

 

This page is based on GEM’s Products and Services Strategy, which has been unanimously approved by the GEM Governing Board (June 19, 2020).

 

2. Framework

Historically, public and private sectors have had different responsibilities e.g. hazard monitoring has been the domain of public institutions, while risk transfer via insurance has been provided mainly by the private sector.

 

GEM’s work over the past 10 years has accelerated the merging of these two sectors to work together to fully assess risk and incorporate risk-based decisions into planning and sustainable development.

 

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Although GEM has been continuously and generously supported by public and private institutions for more than a decade, the development of new open products and services to meet the existing and future needs of the DRR community requires additional support and funding.

 

GEM is committed to supporting the Sendai Framework for DRR and the Sustainable Development Goals, which call for the application of risk models and development of risk information for a wide range of DRR and development applications. GEM is uniquely positioned to provide products and services to both public and private sectors ranging from insurance and corporate asset risk management to early warning systems, post disaster relief and recovery, and disaster reduction policies to facilitate risk reduction.

 

In line with GEM’s non-profit and humanitarian ethos, GEM is introducing products for a fee by:

• partnering with and/or seeking approval of organizations responsible for developing official national hazard or risk models;

• making all for-a-fee products freely available for non-commercial, public-good application;

• developing for-a-fee products as value-added products only, targeted to meet demand of private-sector interests such as: insurance, risk financing or engineering consulting services; and

• offering for-a-fee products through third party organizations that offer marketing and commercialization services (such as online support and commercial licensing).

 

GEM will continue to maintain and develop products and services aimed at its core collaborators and partners in the science, engineering and risk modelling and analysis community, including:

• earthquake hazard databases and catalogs;

• vulnerability and exposure databases and models;

• OpenQuake suite of software and analysis tools; and

• earthquake hazard and risk models and maps.

 

GEM will also develop value-added or enhanced products and services for a wider range of potential users in the risk management and DRR sector, as well as for public interest, including:

• risk models for financial risk management;

• products aimed at users of hazard and risk information; and

• tools for visualizing and comparing the results of hazard and risk analyses.

 

Together, these products are expected to be used for a variety of purposes such as:

• education and training;

• community awareness;

• response planning and warning systems;

• building regulation;

• risk transfer/insurance, including parametric solutions;

• mitigation/reduction; and

• expansion of risk metrics such as for Sendai Framework monitoring.

 

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)

 

This section provides detailed information on how to access GEM’s Open products (Part A) and For-a-fee products (Part B), including how to access these products for free*. GEM’s full list of products and services including those that are made available for a fee may be accessed here soon. This section also contains specific explanations of the most common questions about GEM’s products and services.​