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A global project to predict the risk from earthquakes to different communities is edging closer to reality.
The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) will calculate seismic risk based on the geological characteristics of an area, as well as the types of building and the building regulations in place.
Results of the pilot phase are being announced at an outreach meeting in Washington DC on 3-4 June. So far, the project has produced technical tools needed to calculate risk, and software to help scientists work with the data. These tools, and the results they produce, will now be carefully checked before the first verified estimates of seismic risk and global maps showing these risks are released. All the models, the code used to write them and the resulting data will eventually be freely available.
Seismic success
The GEM project, which began in 2006, involves partners from national governments, international bodies such as the World Bank and private sponsors. It will be fully working by the end of 2013, if not sooner, says GEM's secretary general Rui Pinho, a structural engineer at the University of Pavia in Italy.
During the pilot phase, seismic-risk and hazard specialists gathered information from existing models, and extracted the best parts to develop their own risk and hazard 'engines'. These engines are computer programs designed to estimate the risk that seismic activity poses to a particular region.
"The results are clearly demonstrating that we have something capable of calculating hazard for the entire globe."
Less slick, more smart
The final model is going to be "slick", says Tucker, and that will greatly benefit technical researchers. "But my hunch is that what is needed is not such a sophisticated approach," he says. Tucker hopes that at the meeting in Washington DC he will be able to impress on the GEM leadership the importance of identifying who they want to use their model, and build it accordingly. "What a homeowner needs is not just different to what a researcher or insurer wants it could be in some ways antithetical," says Tucker.
