The Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI) Workshop 2005 organized in Cupertino, California the 15 - 16 March 2005 with subject "Open-source catastrophe risk modeling: How can we do it better?"

This workshop brought together people actively developing open source code for different components of wind, earthquake and flood risk models with people interested in catastrophe risk modeling and with experience in developing open-source software.

Risk models for natural hazards are a key component of the property catastrophe insurance market, an important tool for emergency managers, and are likely to become increasingly important for risk assessment by public and private companies. Catastrophe risk models derived from open source code could be a valuable tool that would complement existing proprietary and public risk models.

HAZUS-MH (Multi-Hazard), is a US applicable standardized methodology and software program that contains models for estimating potential losses from earthquakes, floods, and hurricane winds. HAZUS-MH was developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under contract with the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS).

A presentation made during the first day of the workshop by Charles Scawthorn of Kyoto University, regarding the "History of Risk Model Development" mentioned Lessloss as the actual European approach for developing a HAZUS like product for earthquakes.