Report
Geohazards International (GHI) was established in 1993 as a nonprofit organization to reduce death and suffering caused by earthquakes in the world’s most vulnerable communities
GHI is a global network of people alarmed by the world’s growing earthquake risk, aware of methods that could reduce human suffering, and determined to help. GHI’s Board of Trustees is comprised of earthquake specialists with strong ties to the academic, business, and government sectors of the United States, Japan and Europe. GHI’s Board of Advisors is a group of international experts in the earthquake risk of developing countries; they provide technical guidance to GHI, and, on occasion, participate in GHI projects. GHI’s staff, which performs day-to-day operations, is located in Palo Alto, California, within easy access to many of the world’s most experienced earthquake risk managers in business, government and academic sectors. Among them, the members of the Board of Trustees, the Board of Advisors, and the staff have literally centuries of experience in seismology, earthquake engineering, and risk management.GHI is unique in its goals, values, and effectiveness. No other organization has its particular mission, free of competing political, business, religious, or research priorities. GHI believes in international assistance as well as in local responsibility. Administrative costs are low because its staff is small in number, well educated, and highly motivated, having witnessed the consequences of both earthquakes and earthquake preparation.GHI reduces death and injury by helping vulnerable communities recognize their risk and the methods to manage it. In particular, GHI makes a community safer by raising awareness of its risk, building local institutions to manage that risk, and strengthening schools to protect and train the community’s future generations.In 2000-2001, GHI primary accomplishments were: Completing, with the UN Centre for Regional Development, a two-year research-development pilot project called the Global Earthquake Safety Initiative (GESI). GESI tested a method developed by GHI that evaluates the earthquake risk of a community and assesses the most effective means to manage that risk. In GESI, this method was applied to 21 cities around the world; participants evaluated the potential of GESI to motivate local earthquake risk mitigation actions Collaborating with the National Society of Earthquake Technology, Nepal (NSET) in the School Earthquake Safety Project. In this project, the schools of several small villages near Kathmandu were strengthened to withstand earthquakes and the local masons were trained in earthquake-resistant construction techniques. Contributing to a project managed by the Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) of India, in which a village in Gujarat, India, which was destroyed in the January 2001 earthquake, was reconstructed and the villagers were trained, in the process, in seismic resistant construction methods. Commencing a project to apply the GHI/GESI method to three cities in Gujarat with high earthquake risk.