News Methods and Tools Innovation for Seismic Risk Assessment project By: Jul 25, 2020 Share Facebook LinkedIn GEM is set to start a 3- year project called METIS or Methods and Tools Innovation for Seismic Risk Assessment funded by the European Commission. The project is part of the program. Electricite De France (EDF), a GEM technical collaborator, is coordinating the project which will be implemented in collaboration with 14 other organizations. The project will start in September 2020 and end in August 2024. The objective of is to translate research into practice through rigorous and efficient methodologies and tools to assess seismic safety of NPP (nuclear power plants). It also aims to innovate current practice by combining simulation with experimental data. The research will develop methods to improve the ability to define safety limits for extremely rare events, which go beyond current design analyses (i.e. design extension for earthquakes). The refined seismic PSA (probabilistic safety assessment) is expected to provide meaningful support in defining regulations for safe design of NPP, as well as for assessing plant safety in real-time in case of temporary unavailability of relevant safety equipment or structures. GEM will contribute to the task on seismic hazard assessment and the one on PSA Tools and Methodology. In the hazard task, GEM will implement into the OQ Engine methods such as vector-valued probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA), cluster-based PSHA as well as new methods to propagate epistemic uncertainties. Research will also be carried out in the context of processing earthquake catalogues to remove aftershocks and foreshocks and on testing PSHA models. GEM’s contribution to the PSA Tools and Methodology will concentrate on testing risk results. The participation of GEM in this high-level program will not only enhance GEM’s scientific advancement of earthquake hazard analysis using the OpenQuake engine, but will also promote a two-way sharing of knowledge and skills with other project collaborators for the advancement of earthquake hazard assessment to critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants. The results of this project will help nuclear operators in their periodic safety reviews and to respond to the high-level EU-wide safety objectives of the amended EURATOM nuclear safety directive (stress tests). The considered accident scenarios will provide input for updating severe accident management guidelines (SAMG). No images found. GALLERY 1/2 Gallery VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS

Publications GEM1: OpenGEM System Design Document Share Facebook LinkedIn Download 2010 | Report The aim of this document is to provide an overview of the design of the OpenGEM system, within the scope of the GEM1 project. OpenGEM is the name that was chosen for the IT platform which will allow calculation and communication of earthquake risk on a global scale. One of the goals of the GEM1 project was to design an initial model building structure and this report hence describes the various components of the design. The IT infrastructure described in this report has been reviewed during an intensive IT-review after which a strategy has been determined for further development of GEMs IT architecture, which makes use of the work done during GEM1, but has taken a different approach.

Publications Evaluación de Riesgo Sísmico para Santiago de Cali Share Facebook LinkedIn Download 2022 | Report El presente documento es el resultado del esfuerzo colaborativo entre la Fundación GEM, el Servicio Geológico de los Estados Unidos, la Secretaría de Gestión del Riesgo de Cali, el Servicio Geológico Colombiano y la Universidad EAFIT. El objetivo de este reporte es presentar los resultados de la evaluación de riesgo urbano para la ciudad de Santiago de Cali, obtenidos dentro del contexto del Proyecto para la Comunicación y Formación en la Evaluación de Riesgos por Terremotos (TREQ), financiado por la Oficina de Ayuda Humanitaria de los Estados Unidos (BHA, por sus siglas en inglés).

News News Briefs: GEM activities from March-May 2019 By: May 23, 2019 Share Facebook LinkedIn Mauro Dolce, GEM Governing Board Chairperson during one of the strategic planning exercises. Photo credit: GEM A round-up of GEM's other notable activities during the past three months. GEM Strategic Planning meeting GEM organized a 2-day strategic planning meeting to develop an integrated strategy and vision for a sustainable, resilient GEM from the present to 2030. GEM staff and members of the GEM Sustainability Committee participated in the meeting held at CAR College, Pavia, Italy from 29-30 April. Members of the GRAF Expert Group also joined as advisors. The strategic planning meeting was facilitated by Laura Lee, Architect, Integrated Strategic/Systems Design. European Geosciences Union Meeting 2019 GEM’s Hazard Coordinator, Marco Pagani recently participated in the EGU General Assembly that took place in Vienna, Austria last April. The event drew more than 16,000 scientists from 113 countries and featured 5,531 oral, 9,432 poster, and 1,287 PICO presentations as well as almost 700 unique scientific sessions together with 87 short courses and 338 side events. GEM participates in this yearly event to keep abreast of the latest development and advancements in European geoscience. Other activities: Vitor Silva's participation at SERA workshop and meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland; Marco Pagani's presentation of GEM at Willis Towers Watson in London; Richard Styron's presentation of GEM at the Seismological Society of America conference in Seattle, Washington, USA; and John Schneider's meeting with Professor Tso-Chien Pan from the Institute of Catastrophe Risk Management-NTU Singapore. NTU has rejoined GEM Governing Board this year after a brief hiatus. No images found. GALLERY GEM Strategic Planning GEM Strategic Planning GEM-NTU Singapore Meeting 2019 GEM Strategic Planning 1/9 GEM activity photos March-May 2019 VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS

Publications GEM: a Participatory Framework for Open, State-of-the-Art Models and Tools for Earthquake Risk Assessment Share Facebook LinkedIn Download 2012 | Peer-reviewed The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) initiative aims to develop a global model of earthquake risk as an open source, community-driven project. In order to begin this in a structured way, a number of global components that cover the scientific modules of the model were defined and international consortia were invited to bid and lead these their development. These consortia define standards and best practice related to the methodologies used in seismic hazard and risk assessment and in particular the collection and storage of data needed therein. This paper introduces these global components and describes an open source platform for risk assessment OpenQuake that is being developed to provide access to and interaction with the proposed data and tools.

Publications Seismic risk assessment for mainland Portugal Share Facebook LinkedIn Download 2014 | Peer-reviewed The assessment of the seismic risk at a national scale represents an important resource in order to introduce measures that may reduce potential losses due to future earthquakes. This evaluation results from the combination of three components: seismic hazard, structural vulnerability and exposure data. In this study, a review of existing studies focusing on each one of these areas is carried out, and used together with data from the 2011 Building Census in Portugal to compile the required input models for the evaluation of seismic hazard and risk. In order to better characterize the epistemic uncertainty in the calculations, several approaches are considered within a logic tree structure, such as the consideration of different seismic source zonations, the employment of vulnerability functions derived based on various damage criteria and the employment of distinct spatial resolutions in the exposure model. The aim of this paper is thus to provide an overview of the recent developments regarding the different aspects that influence the seismic hazard and risk in Portugal, as well as an up-to-date identification of the regions that are more vulnerable to earthquakes, together with the expected losses for a probability of exceedance of 10 % in 50 years. The results from the present study were obtained through the OpenQuake engine, the open-source software for seismic risk and hazard assessment developed within the global earthquake model (GEM) initiative.

News News Briefs: May-August 2021 By: Aug 30, 2021 Share Facebook LinkedIn IDF Summit 2021 https://idfsummit.insdevforum.org/ GEM joined its partners, the Insurance Development Forum for the inaugural IDF Summit 2021, held on June 7-8. The theme was Building resilience in a riskier world. Global leaders and hundreds of participants from around the world participated in the event. In case you missed it, you can still visit GEM’s dedicated booth @ Knowledge Hub bit.ly/3ghuJph . Governing Board meeting, June 2021 GEM would like to thank all the sponsors and partners for making the first virtual Governing Board meeting of 2021 a great success. The bi-annual meeting was attended by sponsors from public and private sponsors, as well associate and project partners. The meeting featured the usual (and highly appreciated) progress reports on GEM Secretariat activities, advances in the development of GEM products, including commercial risk models, and initial progress on the development of a new GEM Strategic Plan for 2021 to 2030. European Commission and World Bank Dialogue - Economics for Disaster Prevention and Preparedness https://ec.europa.eu/echo/field-blogs/videos/economics-disaster-prevention-and-preparedness_en https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2021/06/04/economics-for-disaster-prevention-and-preparedness-in-europe The European Commission and World Bank held a Dialogue on June 7th for the release of reports providing an in-depth look at the economics for disaster, prevention and preparedness in Europe. GEM provided research and analytics support on earthquake risk, exposure and vulnerability. Vitor Silva represented GEM in the dialogue. COMPDYN: 8th International Conference on Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering https://2021.compdyn.org/ GEM’s Vitor Silva participated as a panelist in the round table on fragility curves for existing buildings: open challenges in their definition and use for seismic risk analyses. Vitor presented the Global Risk Assessment: mistakes from the past and promises for the future. GEM at GAGE SAGE 2021 Community Science Workshop https://gage-sage-2021.us2.pathable.com/meetings/virtual/ToWA2isYjG7gxhAhF GEM joined the virtual GAGE SAGE 2021 Community Science Workshop on August 16th. GEM’s Catalina Yepes shared GEM’s experiences on the challenges and strategies in training and local collaborations in the International Panel for the Americas. GAGE, the Geodetic Facility for the Advancement of Geosciences, is a facility funded by the US National Science Foundation and NASA and operated by UNAVCO. SAGE is operated by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS). South Africa Model release GEM has completed the development of its earthquake risk model for South Africa into the Oasis Loss Modelling Framework and the AIR Touchstone formats. The model will be available soon for licensing from the Nasdaq Risk Modelling for Catastrophes Service (contact Nasdaq ) and the AIR Touchstone platforms (contact AIR ). The risk model may be used to assess potential financial losses to commercial, industrial and residential buildings due to earthquake ground shaking. GEM’s South Africa earthquake risk model was generated using the hazard model for South Africa developed by the South Africa Council for Geoscience as the national hazard model, and for input to South Africa building design regulations. The vulnerability and exposure models and data were developed by GEM and cover the residential, commercial and industrial building stock. In the commercial models, OpenQuake is used to generate a stochastic set of hazard footprints (i.e., the spatial distribution of ground motion for each scenario event in the stochastic set). The suite of hazard footprints is translated into the Oasis or Touchstone formats, together with the building vulnerability curves to produce ground up losses, which are then fed into the financial module to compute (re)insured losses. Portfolio analyses may be conducted using industry standard occupancy classes. The original OpenQuake (OQ) version of the South Africa model (hazard, vulnerability and exposure components) is available from GEM under a Creative Commons open license (CC BY-SA). See https://www.globalquakemodel.org/product/south-africa-model for licensing and access to the models and data, as well as model documentation. The OQ version provides a much more detailed view of hazard and risk than the commercial models, but provides risk in terms of ground-up losses (i.e., cost of direct physical damage), not insured losses. No images found. GALLERY 1/0 Gallery VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS

Publications Automating building typology identification for seismic risk assessment using deep learning Share Facebook LinkedIn Download 2025 | Peer-reviewed Driven by rapid urbanization and heightened seismic risk concerns, efficient methods for developing regional seismic exposure assessments are advantageous. By leveraging deep learning and computer vision techniques, this study presents a novel approach for automating the identification of building typologies. The detailed building stock required for seismic exposure assessment has been traditionally achieved through time-consuming and costly in-person inspections. Recently, virtual inspections have emerged as a more efficient alternative, but they still require significant manual effort. This study proposes a methodology for automating the characterization of buildings, including details such as the number of stories, structural system, and construction period (pre-code or code), by implementing a convolutional neural network model that processes labeled images from Google Street View. A key innovation of this study is the integration of pre-processing techniques, including an object detector to isolate building façades and perspective correction using a keypoint model and homography transformation, enabling robust performance even with a small data set. This research advances prior methods by classifying individual stories rather than grouping them into broad taxonomic ranges, providing greater precision and applicability for seismic exposure modeling. The results show an 88% accuracy for structural system identification, a 78% accuracy for the number of stories, and a 69% accuracy for construction period determination. These characteristics are integrated into a probabilistic distribution model of building taxonomy that informs about their potential seismic vulnerability. The proposed procedures streamline the development of building stock and seismic exposure models, thus facilitating their use for seismic risk modeling at a regional scale.

Publications GEM1 report on the review of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) software as a basis for development of the OpenQuake Engine Share Facebook LinkedIn Download 2010 | Report The present report reviews a set of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) computer programs (CRISIS, EQRM, NSHMP, OpenSHA, and SEISHAZ) proposed as possible platforms for the development of the GEM1’s hazard engine. The analysis is supplemented by including a number of additional software (FRISK88M, MoCaHAZ, MRS, OHAZ, and SEISRISK IIIM) considered important to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the current state-of-the-art in PSHA. The report is organized into two sections. The first describes the main properties of each PSHA program on the technical (e.g. the programming language) and scientific level (e.g. the PSHA source typologies supported). The second illustrates, for a subset of the selected software, a simple benchmarking exercise aimed at understanding the behaviour of the programs, and to compare the results provided for very simple cases. The review of the selected PSHA software proved to be a very useful exercise to delineate the desirable properties for the GEM1 seismic hazard engine and shows that OpenSHA can accommodate the GEM1 IT and hazard specifications better than the other evaluated software.

News GEM Foundation's Governing Board Meeting Charts 2024 Agenda By: Dec 14, 2023 Dec 1, 2023 Share Facebook LinkedIn GEM Foundation's recent Governing Board meeting, held in Pavia, Italy, from November 30 to December 1st, 2023 highlighted key agendas for 2024. The meeting showcased significant updates, including comprehensive Secretariat and partner reports. Notably, the foundation welcomed a new sponsor, Gallagher Re, and celebrated Zurich's return, alongside Geoscience Australia and SERI-Switzerland's renewals, demonstrating continued support. PartnerRe also upgraded its sponsorship from Advisor to Private Governor, emphasising commitment to GEM's mission. During breaks, GEM Governing Board members and staff were given a tour of EUCENTRE's shake tables. Led by Rui Pinho, former GEM Secretary General and current Vice President of EUCENTRE, the tour showcased the purpose-built shake tables designed for simulating earthquakes and their effects on structures, underlining EUCENTRE's commitment to developing and testing innovative solutions aimed at enhancing community and structural resilience against seismic events. Crucial priorities for 2024 were outlined, emphasising GEM’s ongoing initiatives, such as harmonised global earthquake hazard analysis, event response services for humanitarian agencies, time-dependent hazard models, global exposure to liquefaction, enhanced training workshops, advancements in the OpenQuake engine, updated vulnerability frameworks, and comprehensive exposure and risk mapping, also including the environmental impact of earthquakes. GEM extends its gratitude to everyone who participated in the Governing Board meeting, acknowledging their dedication and enthusiasm, which contributed to its success. No images found. GALLERY 1/0 VIDEO RELATED CONTENTS