A five-days workshop on exposure and vulnerability assessment in Central Asia was organized from April 15 to 19 at the Central Asian Institute for Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Bishkek. The workshop brought together experts from the GEM regional component for Central Asia (EMCA) and the global components on exposure and vulnerability assessment. Goals of the workshop were the definition of a harmonized building typology for Central Asia and the transfer of knowledge on how to derive vulnerability functions following the newly established standards of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM). Experts from different Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and Germany under guidance of Svetlana Brzev (Canada) from the GEM Ontology and Taxonomy group and Vitor Silva (Portugal) from the GEM Model Facility reviewed the existing building typologies from the different countries. A set of building types that are representative for all the countries participating in EMCA could be agreed upon. Building reports have been compiled for each identified building type using the TaxtT tool and a standardized characterisation has been derived following the GEM Building Taxonomy. Moreover, John Bevington (UK) gave an introduction to the GEM Inventory Data Capture Tools (IDCT). Building upon the harmonized building typology, Keith Porter (USA) together with his colleagues Abdelghani Meslem (UK) and Kishor Jaiswal (UK) from the GEM Vulnerability group gave lectures on the GEM methods for empirical, analytical and expert-based vulnerability assessment. The main outcomes of the workshop will be used as input for the EMCA regional risk assessment for Central Asia and provide an important step for the GEM.