Standard Design for Earthquake Resistant Buildings and Aid to Building Code Implementation in Nepal

Abstract eng:
Main source of earthquake risk in the developing countries are absence of earthquake resistance elements in buildings and low level of awareness despite the fact that the knowledge required for improving seismic performance of building is available since long. A majority of buildings are still being constructed without any consideration of earthquake forces, making them highly vulnerable to earthquakes. Buildings are usually constructed by informal processes led primarily by local masons, petty contractors and house-owners, who are not formally trained in academic environment. For earthquake safer communities, all individual buildings need to be designed for earthquake resistance. However, it is not feasible to design structurally all buildings because of cost involved, lack of trained manpower for earthquake resistant design, and construction. Likewise, growing urban population and unplanned development of new urban centers are the cause of increasing risks. For making communities safer, all new constructions need to be earthquake resistant and should follow the provisions of building codes. However, it is not affordable to the common people to have there buildings designed as per requirements by professional engineers. On the other hand, common residential homes have many similarities, common features like small plan area, average 2-3 stories, and construction materials. Such buildings can have similar designs that can be presented as standard design templates so that common people simply use such designs for making their houses. This study was carried out for developing a standard design set of buildings under the ProVention Consortium Applied Research Grants for Disaster Risk Reduction. This paper presents the approaches and methodology used for arriving at the ten most prevalent building plans development, dissemination strategies and recommendations to all stakeholders. The distribution of standard design sets of documents to the communities, the social workers and disaster related organizations as an awareness tool will create the demand for earthquake-resistant construction and beneficial to all who are directly involved in construction industry, house owners and even policy level personnel. A survey for the use of this templates and contribution towards improving seismic performance of new buildings will be under taken in near future.

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