LAUSR

Seismic risk mitigation and minimizing the loss of human lives as well as social and economic disruption due to earthquakes depend on reliable seismic hazard assessment. Global and local collaborative efforts in this perspective should be integrated to provide transparent, consistent and public-open models and tools to harmonize the seismic hazard around the globe. One of the most successful programs to serve for this objective is the GSHAP Global Seismic Hazard Program that delivered the worldwide distribution of 475-year return period peak ground acceleration (PGA). The challenge in sustainable and progressive improvement of global seismic hazard assessment that is, literally, initiated by the GSHAP program is currently undertaken by the non-profit Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Organization (www.globa lquak emode l.org). GEM not only aims to provide harmonized seismic hazard models around the world but also gathers worldwide data and experts to develop tools and resources for transparent earthquake risk assessment anywhere in the world. Seismic Hazard Harmonization in Europe (SHARE; www.share -eu. org) and Earthquake Model of the Middle East (EMME; www.emme-gem.org) projects are recently finished regional projects under this viewpoint for estimating hazard in the broader Europe and the Middle East extending to the Afghan borders, respectively. The former project is granted by the European Council under the 7th Framework Program whereas the latter project is supported by the industry (JIT) for public safety against earthquakes. GEM Organization is involved closely in these two sister projects and they are considered as regional programs within the GEM main body. (GEM is currently finalizing two other similar sister projects in South America and Central Asia). SHARE and EMME projects started with a year of difference; SHARE being ahead and they cooperated closely to exchange knowledge and expertise in different topics of regional probabilistic seismic hazard modeling. Turkish scientists actively involved in these projects for seismic source modeling, ground-motion characterization and hazard calculations as Turkey is the border country between the neighboring regions covered by SHARE and EMME. A little after the