Japan transfers retrofitting technology to make buildings jolt resistant

DHAKA, Oct. 12 (NsNewsWire) — On the occasion of International Day for Disaster Reduction, Japanese experts observed that the country’s important buildings those are vulnerable to earthquake need to be tremor resistance by applying retrofitting technology.
Retrofitting is a technology that could be used to make a vulnerable building earthquake resistant without demolishing it.
“There is a concept that retrofitting is very expensive and it is not viable for economy like Bangladesh. But it is totally wrong. Usually it only costs 10-30 percent of new construction,” said Fumio Kaneko, leader of JICA expert team working here for transferring retrofitting technology from Japan to Bangladesh. A team of Japanese experts have been transferring the retrofitting technology here through imparting training to local engineers under a project titled “Capacity Development on Natural Disaster-Resistant Technique of Construction and Retrofitting for Public Buildings (CNCRP)” implemented by Public Works Department (PWD) with the Support of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Kaneko said Bangladesh is at a high risk of earthquake as the country has not experienced any major earthquake since the 19th century and most of the buildings in Bangladesh are works of masonry that increases the risk further.

“The Rana Plaza tragedy was indeed a wake-up call for us. It is calculated that even reinforced concrete (RC) buildings are 3-5 times more vulnerable to those buildings in Japan,” he said.

He said there are many options including complying Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC), improving existing building condition and raising awareness among people to turn the current situation to a better one. “While we promote the BNBC to take its root in Bangladesh, another option we can take is that to retrofit the existing important buildings,” he said.

Under the CNCRP project, started from March 2011 and to be ended on February 2015, the PWD has sent local engineers to Japan to get expert training on retrofitting technology.

Learning extensively on design, construction and seismic resilience to apply retrofitting technology to structures, these engineers made a pool of experts Kaneko said adding after 3 years of training, Bangladesh engineers raised their skill and now they are teaching other fellow engineers.