The high costs of ignoring seismic design
Hopefully you guys remember the EQ in china (7.9M) from a few months earlier. The Chinese gov't has now posted some expected costs for rebuilding efforts. Total expected costs are $147B, which is an almost unimaginably large cost. For comparison sake, the Northridge EQ (6.7M) in California cost a total of $12.5B and was one of the costliest disasters in US History.
One of the larger costs will undoubtedly be the rebuilding of 3400 schools and strengthening a further 2600 schools. How did so many schools collapse? It's hard to pinpoint blame in a situation like this. Was it the engineers fault - a faulty design? Or maybe construction crews built it wrong? Or maybe the building inspectors who signed off on the building? Or perhaps the national government for not providing financial support or motivation to meet the applicable building code?
It should be noted that China has a modern building code, and that any of their new modern skyscrapers will probably compare pretty well to US skyscrapers. But the lower profile of rural schools and other buildings probably made them easy targets for low quality construction in return for bribes to local officials. While I haven't personally investigated any of those sites, it seems a likely probability because students were so disproportionately affected by the earthquake.
Certainly, any developing nation has a hard choice to make between investing money and resources in EQ resistant buildings vs. building cheap and quick and hoping the big event never comes. Poor choices create a legacy of risk that future generations must live with. We all have a different personal tolerance for risk, let yours be known.
A case in point - one of the heroes of the EQ in China was a school principal in the area, Ye Zhiping, who led efforts to strengthen his school against seismic events. All 2323 students in the school were saved. The total cost for the work was about $60k, or about $25/student. I'd say that was a pretty large return on the investment.
One of the larger costs will undoubtedly be the rebuilding of 3400 schools and strengthening a further 2600 schools. How did so many schools collapse? It's hard to pinpoint blame in a situation like this. Was it the engineers fault - a faulty design? Or maybe construction crews built it wrong? Or maybe the building inspectors who signed off on the building? Or perhaps the national government for not providing financial support or motivation to meet the applicable building code?
It should be noted that China has a modern building code, and that any of their new modern skyscrapers will probably compare pretty well to US skyscrapers. But the lower profile of rural schools and other buildings probably made them easy targets for low quality construction in return for bribes to local officials. While I haven't personally investigated any of those sites, it seems a likely probability because students were so disproportionately affected by the earthquake.
Certainly, any developing nation has a hard choice to make between investing money and resources in EQ resistant buildings vs. building cheap and quick and hoping the big event never comes. Poor choices create a legacy of risk that future generations must live with. We all have a different personal tolerance for risk, let yours be known.
A case in point - one of the heroes of the EQ in China was a school principal in the area, Ye Zhiping, who led efforts to strengthen his school against seismic events. All 2323 students in the school were saved. The total cost for the work was about $60k, or about $25/student. I'd say that was a pretty large return on the investment.
Labels: seismic, structural engineering
posted by Graeme at
11:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home