Global Earthquake Model - GEM

On Wednesday / March 7th, Dr. Ross Stein, a senior scientist with the Earthquake Science Center in Menlo Park, will visit the USGS Advanced Systems Center in Reston, VA. At 10:00 AM he will give a talk about the Global Earthquake Model (GEM), an international public-private partnership building a seismic hazard and risk model for the world, in which USGS scientists are deeply involved.

GEM <http://www.globalquakemodel.org/> manages a collaborative effort aimed at developing and deploying tools and resources for earthquake risk assessment worldwide. It aims to create global standards for seismic hazard and risk assessment, and to attack the problems that no risk models exist for many vulnerable parts of the world, and even where models do exist, they are often inaccessible. Under GEM, hundreds of organizations and individual experts, professionals and practitioners are working together on uniform global databases, methodologies, tools and open-source software.

GEM grew out of a $30K USGS Venture Cap grant in 2006, and now has pledges of $30M for its five-year program. Ross was a founding member of GEM, and now chairs its Scientific Advisory Board. The United States recently became a member nation of GEM, represented by the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), which provides funding to GEM.

The talk will be given in room 3A409 (aka Chief Geologist's Conference Room), at 10:00 AM tomorrow.