News Perfect time for partnerships and collaboration: Hannover Re By: Mar 12, 2019 Share Facebook LinkedIn Changing times Hannover Re, a top reinsurer in the world and a long-time Global Earthquake Model (GEM) sponsor believes now is the perfect time for partnerships and collaboration to adapt to the rapid technological changes and shifting risk management approaches in the reinsurance sector. These changes are fueled by high availability and affordability of technology; increasing vulnerability of poor population throughout the world; and more sophisticated risk-based regulatory frameworks. Open source, open access initiatives Model results are forming the basis for all types of risk transfers and Hannover Re sees that open source risk models will increasingly become the ‘currency’ for insuring, transferring and trading catastrophe business between an expanded base of stakeholders in the future. “The Independent and objective way that GEM is developing the Global Earthquake Risk Model could potentially provide this ‘currency’ and significantly spark market interests,” Jörg Steffensen (L) – General Manager, Hannover Re Group Risk Management Modelling. He also foresees that GEM could be used as a blueprint for future projects to develop open global models for windstorm or flood. GEM is the only not-for-profit-organization developing open-source, open-access seismic risk assessment tools and data – called OpenQuake. With open initiatives gaining momentum in worldwide natural catastrophe (or NatCat) risk assessment and management, GEM’s approach is well placed to become the global standard – committed to key principles for public good, openness and transparency, collaboration and credibility. The GEM advantage By sponsoring GEM, Hannover Re instantly contributes to higher global goals in making the world more resilient to earthquakes. GEM’s full model transparency on data, assumptions and parameterizations perfectly meets the demand of new initiatives, governments, private markets and customers of Hannover Re. With access to GEM’s in-house expertise and state-of-the-art earthquake data and hazard/risk models, Hannover Re was able to develop better information for insurance pricing – effectively reducing the ‘protection gap’. In addition, benchmarking of existing vendor cat models against GEM at Hannover Re improved services for clients. To date, Hannover Re has developed aggregate earthquake risk models for Germany, Iran, Ecuador, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore based on GEM OpenQuake. “Our partnership with GEM expanded in-house expertise on earthquake risk and strengthened our overall internal and external risk management processes. We are committed to continuing this productive collaboration in the years to come.” Jörg Steffensen. No images found. GALLERY 1/0 VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS

News EERI’s Earthquake Spectra releases Special Edition on GEM2018 Global Earthquake Hazard and Risk papers By: Nov 25, 2020 Share Facebook LinkedIn Several peer-reviewed papers on the GEM2018 Global Earthquake Hazard and Risk Model are now available through EERI’s Earthquake Spectra Special Edition. The papers authored by various GEM collaborators from around the world describe how the global, regional and national hazard and risk models launched in December 2018 were developed. This special issue documents the supporting research critical to the development of the Global Seismic Hazard and Risk models by the GEM (Global Earthquake Model) Foundation, representing a major step in understanding earthquake risk globally. Seismic hazard and risk models are needed for accurate assessment of risks in order to promote risk reduction and mitigating actions, such as the improvement of building codes and construction practices, sustainable land use, emergency response, and protection of critical infrastructures, as well as risk transfer through insurance. “The publication of this special volume of papers in Earthquake Spectra marks another great milestone for GEM by revealing to the research community the underlying science and engineering that have gone into the Global Earthquake Maps completed in 2018 ,” said John Schneider, GEM Secretary General. A total of 16 papers can now be accessed at . To read the full press release, visit . No images found. GALLERY 1/1 Gallery VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS

An open-source Python toolkit for earthquake structural modelling, nonlinear analysis, and seismic vulnerability assessment Products Vulnerability Modeller's Toolkit (oq-vmtk) An open-source Python toolkit for earthquake structural modelling, nonlinear analysis, and seismic vulnerability assessment Share Facebook LinkedIn Description The Vulnerability Modellers Toolkit (oq-vmtk) is a Python library for regional seismic vulnerability and risk modelling. It provides a self-contained workflow — from ground motion processing and structural model compilation through nonlinear analysis to fragility and vulnerability function derivation, powered by OpenSeesPy. The toolkit is designed for earthquake engineers and model developers, who need a reproducible and standardised library of functions to integrate to their structural assessment workflows. How to cite this work If you make use of this work, please cite both the publication and the software. Publication: Nafeh, A.M.B., Aljawhari, K., Ettorre, A., Silva, V., and Crowley, H. (2026). The OpenQuake Vulnerability Modellers' Toolkit: An Open-Source Toolkit for Earthquake Vulnerability Modelling Applications, Earthquake Spectra, in press Software: Nafeh, A. M. B., Aljawhari, K., Ettorre, A., Silva, V., & Crowley, H. (2026). OpenQuake Vulnerability Modeller's Toolkit (oq-vmtk) (v1.1.0). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17524871 Available Versions The Open Repository can be accessed by clicking on the link on the right. If your use case does not comply with the license terms, a license can be requested by clicking on the "License Request", where a specific agreement will be provided, depending on the use case. License information There are no restrictions on the use (commercial or otherwise) of the Vulnerability Modeller's Toolkit (oq-vmtk). The source code of the software is available under a GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 license, which requires: Permissions of this strongest copyleft license are conditioned on making available complete source code of licensed works and modifications, which include larger works using a licensed work, under the same license. Copyright and license notices must be preserved. Contributors provide an express grant of patent rights. When a modified version is used to provide a service over a network, the completed modified version must be made available. Any deviation from these terms incur in license infringement. Facebook LinkedIn Share Latest Version v1.1.0 License AGPL v3.0 Available resources Open Repository Documentation License Request text Map View Search Popup title Close Country/Region Available Resources Afghanistan Exposure Africa Exposure Alaska Exposure Country/Region Available Resources Afghanistan Vulnerability Africa Vulnerability Alaska Vulnerability Country/Region Resource Url Afghanistan Risk Profile Africa Risk Profile Alaska Risk Profile Search Found Country/Region Resource Url Afghanistan Exposure Africa Exposure Alaska Exposure Preview Preview is not available. Search Found Country/Region Resource Url Afghanistan Vulnerability Africa Vulnerability Alaska Vulnerability Preview Preview is not available. Search Found Country/Region Resource Url Afghanistan Risk Profile Africa Risk Profile Alaska Risk Profile Preview Preview is not available. Related products Global Exposure Model Global Vulnerability Model Country-Territory Seismic Risk Profiles Related publications For downloading or accessing detailed product information like PNG/PDF maps, datasets, license request, shapefiles and more, please switch to a desktop or laptop computer. Thank you for your understanding.

News UNDRR GRAF: enhanced and revitalized approach in the midst of a pandemic By: Aug 30, 2021 Share Facebook LinkedIn The UNDRR successfully launched the Global Risk Assessment Framework (GRAF) during the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (GP2019) Forum held in May 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then, the agency has created and organized a global collaborative framework for developing, sharing and using risk information across hazards, disciplines, and geographic scales (i.e., global to local), leveraging existing institutions and collaboration frameworks and addressing the systemic nature of risk and its cascading effects. Over the past year, with the COVID 19 pandemic demonstrating its devastating impacts on economies and the health and well-being of millions of people worldwide, the UNDRR has developed a revised approach with concrete deliverables to give GRAF a specific focus on field implementation. “By expanding opportunities for UN member states to benefit from global partnerships with recognized risk experts like GEM, the GRAF is accelerating access to the latest risk science in a world increasingly impacted by compound and systemic risks”, noted Jenty Kirsch-Wood, the head of Global Risk and Reporting in the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction based in Geneva, Switzerland. GRAF has four working groups, one of which is Mapping & Gap Analysis, co-chaired by GEM Secretary General, John Schneider and John Rees (British Geological Survey). The working group has provided expert advice to GRAF on understanding stakeholder needs as risk assessment information providers and users. John and John are also establishing a working group for Exposure & Vulnerability. “The GRAF is a great opportunity to bring cohesion to the risk assessment community to help national governments in support of Sendai risk indicators and targets,” said John Schneider, GEM Secretary General. He added, “GEM is proud to support the GRAF by contributing its expertise in hazard and risk assessment as well as its experience in local-to-global collaboration on earthquakes and a range of natural hazards risk modelling issues.” GRAF aims to strengthen the capacity of countries to develop and use risk analysis that comprehends the interconnectivity of different systems and the cascading and compound nature of risk. The GRAF approach comprises global and country level activities. Globally, it will focus on the development of methodologies, analytics, the data visualization platform, and partnership within the UN system and across a wide range of disciplines. At the country level, GRAF will be initially rolled-out in Costa Rica, Eswatini and Pakistan in 2021. The GRAF approach is expected to improve information available to national and local governments, planners and other stakeholders on how to manage complex, multi-hazard risks across systems, in the context of climate change. More about GRAF at https://www.preventionweb.net/understanding-disaster-risk/graf . No images found. GALLERY 1/0 Gallery VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS

News METIS Summer School on Seismic Hazard Analysis By: Sep 15, 2022 Share Facebook LinkedIn GEM Foundation and Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori, Pavia successfully completed the METIS project seismic hazard summer school for 20 PhD students and postdocs from various parts of the world held from June 20th – 23rd in Pavia, Italy. The event was aimed at introducing the participants to the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) and to recent methodologies developed in the framework of the Methods and Tools Innovation for Seismic Risk Assessment (METIS) project. The summer school, which consisted of a series of lectures and hands-on laboratories, was organised in the context of the METIS project. GEM and IUSS jointly offered lectures on the main functionalities of the OpenQuake Engine and GEM’s tools for building components of a hazard input model, aftershock PSHA, vector-valued PSHA and the conditional spectrum approach, and time-histories selection for engineering applications. GEM contributes to the METIS project on seismic hazard assessment and on probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) Tools and Methodology. GEM’s contribution to the PSA Tools and Methodology will concentrate on testing risk results. The major goal of the METIS project is to propose innovations in tools and methodologies for seismic safety assessment of nuclear reactors and to develop new state-of-the-art approaches, as well as promote good practices for conducting seismic PSAs, in particular by supporting technology transfer from the research community to the industry. No images found. GALLERY 1/0 VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS

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Publications A Building Classification System for Multi-hazard Risk Assessment Share Facebook LinkedIn Download 2022 | Peer-reviewed A uniform and comprehensive classification system, often referred to as taxonomy, is fundamental for the characterization of building portfolios for natural hazard risk assessment. A building taxonomy characterizes assets according to attributes that can influence the likelihood of damage due to the effects of natural hazards. Within the scope of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) initiative, a building taxonomy (GEM Building Taxonomy V2.0) was developed with the goal of classifying buildings according to their seismic vulnerability. This taxonomy contained 13 building attributes, including the main material of construction, lateral load-resisting system, date of construction and number of stories. Since its release in 2012, the taxonomy has been used by hundreds of experts working on exposure and risk modeling efforts. These applications allowed the identification of several limitations, which led to the improvement and expansion of this taxonomy into a new classification system compatible with multi-hazard risk assessment. This expanded taxonomy (named GED4ALL) includes more attributes and several details relevant for buildings exposed to natural hazards beyond earthquakes. GED4ALL has been applied in several international initiatives, enabling the identification of the most common building classes in the world, and facilitating compatibility between exposure models and databases of vulnerability and damage databases.

News GEM convenes key players in global exposure modelling at a workshop in Pavia By: Apr 24, 2026 Feb 5, 2026 Share Facebook LinkedIn GEM hosted a one-day Global Exposure Modelling Workshop in Pavia in February 2026, bringing together experts from Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Overture Maps Foundation, the Joint Research Centre (JRC), German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Meta, Technical University of Munich, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the U.S. Geological Survey, alongside the GEM exposure modelling team. The workshop focused on a central challenge in global risk modelling: how to build consistent exposure information that can describe buildings and infrastructure across countries while remaining useful for hazard, vulnerability and loss analysis. In GEM’s broader modelling framework, exposure data are a core component of risk assessment, providing information on building stock, occupancy, replacement cost and related characteristics needed to estimate potential impacts. GEM’s existing Global Exposure Model is a mosaic of national models covering residential, commercial and industrial building stock worldwide. The model includes information at the smallest available administrative level for each country or territory and is designed to support global and regional risk assessment. The workshop in Pavia built on this foundation by exploring how newer sources and methods could help move toward more detailed, individual building-level exposure information at a global scale. Participants contributed perspectives ranging from crowd-sourced mapping and open geospatial datasets to Earth observation, AI-based classification and building-level exposure models. Across the day, discussions moved from global imagery and map sources to the practical requirements of integrating detailed building information into multi-hazard risk models. A final roundtable considered shared priorities and possible frameworks for collaboration toward a building-level global exposure model, including the need for consistency, interoperability and open methodologies. The workshop highlighted how global exposure modelling increasingly depends on collaboration across communities that do not always work together directly, including geospatial data providers, Earth observation specialists and risk scientists. By convening these perspectives in one setting, GEM used the event not only to review current approaches, but also to help define the next steps in strengthening the exposure component of global risk modelling. No images found. GALLERY 1/0 VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS

The first global assessment of the carbon cost of earthquakes Products Global Seismic Embodied Carbon Risk The first global assessment of the carbon cost of earthquakes Share Facebook LinkedIn Description The v2026.1 Global Seismic Embodied-Carbon Risk Map shows the carbon footprint of earthquakes in terms of emissions from building damage due to ground shaking. The model combines seismic hazard, vulnerability, exposure and embodied carbon factors to estimate the average annual embodied carbon (AAEC) for residential, commercial and industrial buildings worldwide, corresponding to approximately 17 MtCO2e per year. AAEC is computed using the event-based calculator of the GEM OpenQuake Engine, which aggregates impacts from multiple earthquake scenarios into a long-term annualised metric. The underlying global exposure model describes building stocks using data on construction material, structural system, occupancy, replacement cost and other relevant vulnerability attributes. A newly developed harmonised embodied-carbon database is used to assign replacement carbon values to exposed buildings worldwide, capturing regional differences in production systems and supply chains. Overall, the current global building stock embodies approximately 102 GtCO2e. How to cite this work Caruso M, Aljawhari K, Nafeh AMB, Calderón A, Rao A, Yepes-Estrada C, Silva V (2026). Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Seismic Embodied-Carbon Risk Map (version 2026.1), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20208633. Available Versions A PDF poster, as well as a high-resolution PNG of embodied carbon risk calculated globally, 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 The downloadable resources are available under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license, which requires: Attribution (you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made) 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". Facebook LinkedIn Share Latest Version v2026.1 License CC BY-SA 4.0 Available resources Geoviewer PNG Poster Download Acknowledgements License Request Contributors text Map View Search Popup title Close Country/Region Available Resources Afghanistan Exposure Africa Exposure Alaska Exposure Country/Region Available Resources Afghanistan Vulnerability Africa Vulnerability Alaska Vulnerability Country/Region Resource Url Afghanistan Risk Profile Africa Risk Profile Alaska Risk Profile Search Found Country/Region Resource Url Afghanistan Exposure Africa Exposure Alaska Exposure Preview Preview is not available. Search Found Country/Region Resource Url Afghanistan Vulnerability Africa Vulnerability Alaska Vulnerability Preview Preview is not available. Search Found Country/Region Resource Url Afghanistan Risk Profile Africa Risk Profile Alaska Risk Profile Preview Preview is not available. Related products Global Liquefaction Hazard Global Exposure Model Global Vulnerability Model Global Seismic Embodied Carbon Risk Global Seismic Risk Map Country-Territory Seismic Risk Profiles OpenQuake Engine Global Seismic Hazard Map Related publications For downloading or accessing detailed product information like PNG/PDF maps, datasets, license request, shapefiles and more, please switch to a desktop or laptop computer. Thank you for your understanding.

Publications Advancing nearshore and onshore tsunami hazard approximation with machine learning surrogates Share Facebook LinkedIn Download 2024 | Peer-reviewed Probabilistic tsunami hazard and risk assessment (PTHA and PTRA) are vital methodologies for computing tsunami risk and prompt measures to mitigate impacts. At large regional scales, their use and scope are currently limited by the computational costs of numerically intensive simulations behind them, which may be feasible only with advanced computational resources like high-performance computing (HPC) and may still require reductions in resolution, number of scenarios modelled, or use of simpler approximation schemes. To conduct PTHA and PTRA for large proportions of the coast, we therefore need to develop concepts and algorithms for reducing the number of events simulated and for more efficiently approximating the needed simulation results. This case study for a coastal region of Tohoku, Japan, utilises a limited number of tsunami simulations from submarine earthquakes along the subduction interface to build a wave propagation and inundation database and fits these simulation results through a machine learning-based variational encoder-decoder model. This is used as a surrogate to predict the tsunami waveform at the coast and the maximum inundation depths onshore at the different test sites. The performance of the surrogate models was assessed using a 5-fold cross validation assessment across the simulation events. Further to understand its real world performance and test the generalisability of the model, we used 5 very different tsunami source models from literature for historic events to further benchmark the model and understand its current deficiencies.