Latin American contributions to the GEM’s Earthquake Consequences Database

One of the projects of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) was to develop a global earthquake consequences database (GEMECD) which served both to be an open and public repository of damages and losses on different types of elements at global level and also as a benchmark for the development of vulnerability models that could capture specific characteristics of the affected countries. The online earthquakes consequences database has information on 71 events where 14 correspond to events that occurred within the Latin American and the Caribbean Region. A comprehensive review and data gathering process was developed identifying in each of the selected earthquakes aspects that were of interest in terms of casualties (considering socio-economic implications) assessment, damages to critical facilities and infrastructure and those that triggered secondary hazards such as landslides, tsunami and fires. When possible, damages and casualties were geo-located under the standardized framework of the GEMECD. The contributions of the Latin American and the Caribbean region to the database represented both a challenge and an opportunity to collect, review and standardize data from previous earthquakes besides moving a step forward in the field of open-data.