OpenQuake-engine is the seismic hazard and risk calculation software developed by the Global Earthquake Model. By following current standards in software developments like testdriven development and continuous integration, the OpenQuake-engine aims at becoming an open, and community-driven tool for seismic hazard and risk analysis.

The OpenQuake Engine software provides calculation and assessment of seismic hazard, risk and decision-making tools via the data, methods and standards that are being developed by GEM (Global Earthquake Model) and its collaborators. The seismic hazard calculations of the OpenQuake Engine are powered by the OpenQuake Hazard Library and OpenQuake Risk Library Both libraries were built by the OpenQuake team to serve as a fast, stable, and lightweight alternative to existing risk and hazard libraries. To get involved in OpenQuake, join us on IRC (irc.freenode.net) in the #openquake channel by using an IRC client or via web at http://webchat.freenode.net. You can also submit questions, comments, or support requests to our OpenQuake users mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/openquake-users. You can find more information about the project at http://www.globalquakemodel.org/tools-products

Since its inception in the 1960s, probabilistic seismic‐hazard analysis (PSHA) (Cornell, 1968; McGuire, 2004, 2008) has emerged as the principal methodology for assessing the potential hazard posed by earthquake ground motion in a broad range of contexts. Seismic‐hazard analysis serves different needs coming from a wide spectrum of users and applications. These may encompass engineering design, assessment of earthquake risk to portfolios of assets within the insurance and reinsurance sectors, engineering seismological research, and effective mitigation via public policy in the form of urban zoning and building design code formulation. End users of seismic‐hazard analyses from...

The current document describes the testing procedures adopted in the development of the hazard component of the OpenQuake-engine (OQ-engine), the open source hazard and risk software developed by the Global Earthquake Model initiative. Nowadays seismic hazard analysis serves different needs coming from a variety of users and applications. These may encompass engineering design, assessment of earthquake risk to portfolios of assets within the insurance and reinsurance sectors, engineering seismological research, and effective mitigation via public policy in the form of urban zoning and building design code formulation.

This chapter provides an overview of the OpenQuake-engine (OQ-engine), its structure and the processes adopted for its development. A particular emphasis is placed on transparency, reproducibility, community-based development and testing (Pagani et al., 2014a), the central tenets of the development process adopted since the early stages of the project.

This document describes a selection of published ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) (also known as attenuation relations or ground-motion models) and their features, for use in the seismic hazard assessment to be performed at the global scale in GEM1. Such a scale of application obviously requires that all the significant tectonic regimes affecting the generation of earthquakes that can cause damage to the built environment be taken into account in the selection. This requirement marks a first difference with respect to, for instance, those of the SHARE project, focussed on Europe and neighbouring countries only. The extension to the global scale requires dealing with many large regions belonging to different tectonic regimes where no strong-motion data have ever been recorded and no GMPEs directly based on strong-motion data been proposed. The whole of Africa, leaving out Algeria and Egypt, is a striking example of this situation, as are vast areas of Asia.

InthisreportwedescribetheSub-SaharanAfricaGeodeticStrainRateModel1.0,whichisacontributionto theGlobalEarthquakeModelFoundation(GEM)StrainRateProject.Theobjectiveofthisworkistoimprove the latest GEM geodetic strain rate model with an updated strain rate field of sub-Saharan Africa. SubSaharan Africa encompasses the East African Rift System (EARS), the active divergent plate boundary between the Nubian and Somalian plates, which accommodates strain along the boundaries of at least 3 microplates.ThecurrentversionoftheGEMgeodeticstrainratemodelisconstrainedbypublishedgeodetic data along the EARS and includes microplates between the Nubian and Somalian plates. In this work we developedan improved strain rate field for sub-Saharan Africa that incorporates 1)anexpandedgeodetic velocity fieldwithin theNubia-Somaliaplatesystemandalong theEARS2) redefined regionsofdeforming zones guided by seismicity distribution, and 3) updated constraints on block rotations from the recent publicationofSariaetal.(2014).TheSub-SaharanAfricaGeodeticStrainRateModel1.0spanslongitudes22 to55.5andlatitudes-52to20with0.5°(longitude)by0.4°(latitude)spacing,whichincludespartorallofthe following platesand/or sub-plates: Somalia,Nubia, Rovuma, Lwandle, Victoria, Antarctica,and Arabia. For theseplates/sub-platesweassignrigidblockrotationsasboundaryconstraintsonthestrainratecalculation thatisdeterminedusingtheHainesandHoltmethodof fittingsplinestogeodeticdata foraninterpolated velocitygradienttensorfield.Wederivestrainrates,velocities,andvorticityratesfromthevelocitygradient tensorfield.FollowingtheworkofKreemeretal.2014fortheGEMgeodeticstrainratefieldwealsoprovide estimates of model uncertainties, velocities, vorticity, and strain rates in a Nubia-fixed reference frame relativetothelowermantlefora0.1°x0.1°mesh.

This is the final report of the GEM Faulted Earth Project (GFE), which was active between 2010 and 2013. GFE set out to build a global active fault database with a common set of strategies, standards and formats, to be placed in the public domain. Nearly 100 individuals from 43 institutions in 21 countries contributed to GFE by providing feedback on the database design and the compilation tool, as well as the documents describing them, contributing data and participating in several workshops.