Seismic retrofit and a step forwards building safety

3rd memorial of the 2013 Rana Plaza incident

Public Works Department (PWD) under the Ministry of Housing and Public Works (MoHPW) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) launched a Project on Promoting Building Safety for Disaster Risk Reduction in the Public Buildings in Bangladesh (BSPP) at Lake Shore Hotel, Gulshan, Dhaka on Saturday. Vice Chancellor, University of Asia Pacific Prof. Jamilur Reza Choudhury, as the Chief Guest.

Joint Secretary of Ministry of Housing and Public Works, Rahamat Ullah Mohd. Dastagir, ndc, as well as Additional Chief Engineer of Public Works Department, Syed Azizul Haq, as special guest, and Chief Representative of JICA Bangladesh Office, Mr. Mikio Hataeda as the Guest of photoHonour were present in the inaugural session of the seminar. The seminar was chaired by Mr. Aminul Farhad, Additional Chief Engineer (P & SP) of Public Works Department. Representatives from different ministries, relevant govt. agencies, donor agencies, national and international NGOs, universities and other relevant stakeholders were present in the seminar.

Bangladesh is located at southern region of the Himalayas, which is one of the most earthquake prone areas in the world. In the past, the Great Assam Earthquake that occurred more than 100 years ago in 1897 with magnitude of more than 8.0 caused severe damages to life and properties in Bangladesh.

Further, some of the historical earthquakes occurred within Bangladesh, which provided damages to the country. The most recent Gorkha Earthquake in April 2015 killed over 8,000 people in the neighbouring country Nepal. Even in Bangladesh, more than 200 people were also injured including 4 deaths due to Gorkha Earthquake, although the epicenter was more than 400km far from the country.

Building risk including earthquake in Bangladesh is growing with every fast because of the rapid and unplanned urbanization and sub-standard construction of buildings. Even without earthquake, the collapse of Rana Plaza, a ready-made garment factory in April 2013 killed 1,135 people is one of the living examples of sub-standard construction of building in the country.

In order to protect the people’s living in Bangladesh, and to prop up the solid economic growth of the country, it is an urgent issue to promote efforts to strengthen the safety of buildings as well as reduce the disaster risk in urban areas. In “National Plan for Disaster Management, 2010-2015” the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) also identified that preparing to implement the efforts for strengthening the safety of buildings in urban areas is one of the top priority measures for disaster risk reduction in the country.

Realizing the urgent need of building safety in urban areas, GoB and JICA signed a Record of Discussion (R/D) in December, 2015 for implementing the BSPP project. The main purpose of this project is to improve the building safety in urban area of Bangladesh through three core activities, such as 1) human resource development; 2) enhancement of technical capacity; and 3) regulatory system development. The purpose, detail activities, work plan, and expectations of the BSPP project were shared and discussed among the stakeholders in launching session of the program. The project will be implemented in two phases- 1st phase: February 2016 to June 2017 and 2nd phase: July 2017 to January 2020. The selected study area of the project is Dhaka City and its surrounding area (Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayanganj Districts), Chittagong City Corporation and Sylhet City Corporation area.

The latter part of the seminar was the completion ceremony of the retrofitting works for DK Knitwear Ltd. building, where the essences of the seismic retrofitting works were introduced utilizing visual media. The retrofitting program under the SME loan by the Government of Japan were started soon after the Rana Plaza incident in 2013 with the previous technical cooperation of JICA through “The project for Capacity Development on Natural Disaster Resistant Techniques of Construction and Retrofitting for Public Buildings (CNCRP)”, jointly implemented by JICA and PWD from March 2011 to January 2016. The major outputs of the CNCRP project are 1) actual retrofitting building implementation; 2) preparation of the building inventory of Dhaka City Corporation with around 2,000 buildings that PWD is maintaining; 3) the study of seismic retrofitting construction as well as supervision methods suitable for Bangladesh; 4) the development of manuals conforming to the BNBC for seismic design of new construction, seismic evaluation, seismic retrofitting design; 5) training of PWD staffs and other engineers; 6) the educational activities to urban residents in disaster management; and so on. Actually, in 2014-2015 the first Seismic Retrofit for public building was implemented at Tejgaon Fire Station, and DK Knitwear Ltd. Factory building, RMG sector, already finished in 2015-2016. Currently, another two buildings in RMG sector are in progress, and the administrative building of Betar (Radio) Bangladesh is in progress for seismic retrofitting. There are several candidate buildings waiting for. Thus, Seismic Retrofit has become a kind of popular term.

It is expected that with the actual experience of field implementation, the newly launching project of BSPP, aims to continue more endeavor for promoting safer buildings in Bangladesh in wider scale and more concrete and enhanced approach.


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