Central government officials began prioritizing post-earthquake reconstruction efforts yesterday, placing special emphasis on new guidelines experts say should be put in place to prevent future building on or near fault lines.
At a meeting of the Ministry of the Interior's construction and planning administration, Vice-Minister Lin Jon-sen (林中森) said the priority should be classification of the reconstruction zones. Regions that need to be completely regenerated must be differentiated from those that need partial reconstruction work for the rebuilding work to proceed efficiently, he said.
It is also imperative to determine which of the devastated areas should be classified as zones in which future construction should be restricted or entirely forbidden, he said.
Scholars attending the meeting suggested that building should be outlawed within a distance of 50 meters either side of a fault line, and should be limited in its nature within 100 meters.
Lin Chien-yuan (林建元), an engineering specialist from National Taiwan University, said limiting construction in the vicinity of active faults was a policy adopted by the US state of California following the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake.
Land designated unfit to build on will be classified as "green space" only, the vice-minister said.
However, he stressed the urgent need to identify the zones before acting. "In order to do this, we will be looking to high-tech equipment for assistance. We will conduct a comprehensive inspection of the quake-affected regions using aerial photos," he said, brushing off a suggestion by some scholars that nothing could be more reliable than checks by crews on the ground.
"Ground checks will take too much time. We will use aerial photos to produce images of those regions covering an area of 50 to 100 hectares at a time," he said.
The aerial photos, provided by the military but distributed through the Council of Agriculture (COA), are high-resolution images taken during the first few days following the earthquake.
Lin said the interior ministry will take charge of the distribution of all aerial photos, which currently number around 1,500.
"Once the photos have been organized, the basic data they provide to agencies involved reconstruction efforts should help with streamlining the rebuilding process," Lin said.
One scholar at the meeting proposed that a special law be enacted to handle post-quake reconstruction efforts.
Li Wei-yi (李威儀), a professor at National Taiwan University's department of science and technology, said reconstruction work will take a long time and that the six-month emergency decree announced by President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) would not suffice.
"Reconstruction work after the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan is still going on," said Li. "We need to compensate for the insufficiency of the emergency decree with an earthquake reconstruction law which would cover a more suitable time-frame and better cover legal issues that have arisen from the disaster."
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
SHARED VALUES: The US, Taiwan and other allies hope to maintain the cross-strait ‘status quo’ to foster regional prosperity and growth, the former US vice president said Former US vice president Mike Pence yesterday vowed to continue to support US-Taiwan relations, and to defend the security and interests of both countries and the free world. At a meeting with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Pence said that the US and Taiwan enjoy strong and continued friendship based on the shared values of freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Such foundations exceed limitations imposed by geography and culture, said Pence, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time. The US and Taiwan have shared interests, and Americans are increasingly concerned about China’s
RSS