Bangladesh gets Japanese tremor technology to reduce damage

DHAKA, Sept 21 (BSS) - Local civil engineers are transferring retrofitting technology from Japanese experts to turn important public buildings into tremor resistant to minimize damage from possible high-intensity earthquake.

"Now we are taking the technology from the Japanese experts and will go for retrofitting important establishments after gaining expertise on it," Superintending Engineer of Design Circle-1 of Public Works Department Abdul Malek Sikder told BSS today.

Retrofitting technique is applied to a building as an extra protection with additional support of shear wall or steel amid experts' assessment that Bangladesh faces a high risk of moderate to strong earthquakes that may result in widespread damage and loss of thousands of lives.

The initiative of technology transfer has been taken under a four- year project styled 'capacity development on natural disaster-resistant techniques of construction and retrofitting for public buildings' supported by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The main objective of the project, started this year and will end in 2014, is retrofitting of public establishment related to emergency services including important government building, hospitals, fire station, school and shelters.

Sikder said PWD would conduct an assessment on jolt vulnerability of the public buildings in the large cities during the project period. "After the project we will ask for fund to retrofit all the important public building phase by phase as priority basis," he said.

Under the project, the Japanese experts will impart training to nearly 650 civil and 350 diploma engineers about various aspects of the technology here. PWD will issue official license to the engineers upon completion of the training programme.

Sikder said retrofitting technique is widely used in tremor prone countries but the local engineers here haven't got that much practical knowledge of the technology as earthquake is comparatively a new threat of disaster for Bangladesh.

"With the Japanese experts we will find out the most appropriate and cost effective retrofitting technology for Bangladesh," he said.

In-charge of Disaster Mitigation and Climate Change wing of JICA Bangladesh Hideki Katayama said his government has taken the initiative to help Bangladesh protecting its important establishments from high-intensity earthquake so that effective rescue operation can be conducted after the disaster.

JICA Disaster Management and Climate Change Programme officer M Anisuzzaman Chowdhury said the Japanese team comprising eight experts have already gave the first part of month long training to PWD design circle engineersthis this year and the team is expected to visit Dhaka again soon.

The team will visit Bangladesh twice for one month for each occasion in a year to transfer the technology to the local engineers.

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