Research Paper Earthquake Spectra 1–27 Ó The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/8755293020957374 journals.sagepub.com/home/eqs Probabilistic seismic risk assessment of India Anirudh Rao 1 , Debashish Dutta 2 , Pratim Kalita 3 , Nick Ackerley 4 , Vitor Silva, M.EERI 1 , Meera Raghunandan, M.EERI 5 , Jayadipta Ghosh 5 , Siddhartha Ghosh, M.EERI 5 , Svetlana Brzev, M.EERI 6 , and Kaustubh Dasgupta 7 Abstract This study presents a comprehensive open probabilistic seismic risk model for India. The proposed model comprises a nationwide residential and non-residential building exposure model, a selection of analytical seismic vulnerability functions tailored for Indian building classes, and the open implementation of an existing probabilistic seis- mic hazard model for India. The vulnerability of the building exposure is combined with the seismic hazard using the stochastic (Monte Carlo) event-based calculator of the OpenQuake engine to estimate probabilistic seismic risk metrics such as average annual economic losses and the exceedance probability curves at the national, state, district, and subdistrict levels. The risk model and the underlying datasets, along with the risk metrics calculated at different scales, are intended to be used as tools to quantitatively assess the earthquake risk across India and also compare with other countries to develop risk-informed building design guidelines, for more careful land- use planning, to optimize earthquake insurance pricing, and to enhance general earth- quake risk awareness and preparedness. Keywords Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment, probabilistic seismic risk assessment, building exposure, vulnerability, India, earthquake risk model Date received: 2 September 2019; accepted: 10 August 2020 1 Global Earthquake Model Foundation, Pavia, Italy 2 Catastrophe Perils, Swiss Re, Bengaluru, India 3 Catastrophe Analytics, Willis Re, Thane, India 4 Canadian Hazards Information Service, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada 5 Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India 6 Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gandhinagar, India 7 Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, India Corresponding author: Anirudh Rao, Global Earthquake Model Foundation, Via Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy. Email: anirudh.rao@globalquakemodel.org