Mission
Initiated by the OECD’s Global Science Forum, GEM was formed in 2009 as a non-profit foundation in Pavia, Italy, funded through a public-private sponsorship with the vision to create a world that is resilient to earthquakes. GEM’s mission is to become one of the world’s most complete sources of risk resources and a globally accepted standard for seismic risk assessment, whose products are applied in risk management worldwide.
Disaster Reduction Goal
GEM builds capacity to assess and manage risk through open, transparent and collaborative seismic risk assessment at local, national, regional and global scales. Using state-of-the-art tools, GEM is committed to share and advocate open, reliable earthquake risk information to support sound disaster risk-reduction planning at various levels.
Coordination of global and regional activities related to seismic risk, community participation and networking.
- Advance knowledge of seismic hazard and vulnerability,
- Produce hazard and risk maps and indicators and widely disseminate these
- Develop and improve (open) global databases
- Promote open exchange of data and software
- Promote application of remote sensing, GIS, cost-benefit assessment
- Develop common methodologies for risk assessment…
- Provide easily understandable information on seismic risk
- Improve dialogue between scientific communities and practitioners
- Offer training programmes / workshops
- Strengthen technical and scientific capacities
- Promote development of financial risk-sharing mechanisms
- Aid revision and development of building codes
- Provide tools and indicators supporting decision-making
- Provide open databases + open source software / tools
- Being organised as a public-private initiative (GEM is a collaborative effort with partners from both government, the private sector and international organisations who will directly use the models and tools to address underlying risk factors for their constituencies)
- Deployment and support of coordinated regional programmes
- Working where possible with earthquake risk mitigation programmes
Voluntary Commitments
The Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments (SFVC) online platform allows stakeholders to inform the public about their work on DRR. The SFVC online platform is a useful toolto know who is doing what and where for the implementation of the Sendai Framework, which could foster potential collaboration among stakeholders. All stakeholders (private sector, civil society organizations, academia, media, local governments, etc.) working on DRR can submit their commitments and report on their progress and deliverables.