Govt working to make Bangladesh an earthquake-resistant country by 2071: Enamur

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Govt working to make Bangladesh an earthquake-resistant country by 2071: Enamur​

BANGLADESH​

TBS Report
02 March, 2023, 05:40 pm
Last modified: 02 March, 2023, 05:57 pm

Dr Enamur Rahman, state minister for Disaster Management and Relief. Photo: BSS

State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Dr Enamur Rahman said that the government has taken effective steps to make Bangladesh an earthquake-resistant state by 2071.

"This programme will be implemented with the financial and technical support of Japan," he made the disclosure while addressing at the closing ceremony of a shadow parliament debate competition on Thursday (2 March).

Debate for Democracy organised the competition titled "The role of the building owner is more important than the government in dealing with the risk of earthquakes" at Bangladesh Film Development Corporation (BFDC) in the capital's Tejgaon.

Referring to Japan as a country resistant in the face of earthquakes, Enamur Rahman said, "If a 10-magnitude earthquake strikes Japan, the 80-storeyed buildings would tremble but not collapse. Whereas, Bangladesh has millions of buildings but does not have the hundreds of engineers (required to build more earthquake-proof structures)."

Debate for Democracy Chairman Hasan Ahmed Chowdhury Kiran presented 10-point recommendations on earthquake risk management.

 

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Referring to Japan as a country resistant in the face of earthquakes, Enamur Rahman said, "If a 10-magnitude earthquake strikes Japan, the 80-storeyed buildings would tremble but not collapse. Whereas, Bangladesh has millions of buildings but does not have the hundreds of engineers (required to build more earthquake-proof structures)."

Civil/ structural engineers do not learn that much about the design of earthquake-resistant structures when they finish undergraduate, graduate, or doctoral courses.

Usually, construction engineers cannot learn this. They just follow the design/ construction drawings to build a structure/ building.

When working in a consultant office in a country like Japan or California, engineers learn from the examples of their seniors. They learn how to analyze Bending Moments (BM) and Shear Forces (SF) due to various external loadings such as vertical Dead Loads, Live Loads, horizontal Wind Loads, and the horizontal components of Earthquake/ Seismic Loads on the structural members such as main columns or beams.

The standard procedure is to do the mathematical calculations to obtain the value of two forces called BM and SF of a structure, usually called Rahmen Structures, subjected to the loads above. Simply speaking, the area of concrete (Ac) of a structure (beam/ column) is decided by the maximum value of SF. And the value of BM decides the minimum Area of reinforcement steel (As). Usually, the Safety Factor (S.F) is taken as 1.5.

The things above cannot be learned just by wishing. The relevant people in the design offices should study and learn from the ACI (American Concrete Institute) codes ACI 318-19 (22).