The National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) yesterday said it is encouraging private homeowners to undergo an earthquake resistance evaluation, particularly if their house was built before the 921 Earthquake.
Nearly 60 percent of homes that have existed for more than 30 years were built before the magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck on Sept. 21, 1999, when the nation had a relatively underdeveloped construction code, Ministry of the Interior data showed.
The 921 Earthquake, which damaged more than 100,000 houses, was a turning point in earthquake-resistant construction in Taiwan, NCREE Director Ou Yu-chen (歐昱辰) said.
Photo courtesy of the New Taipei City Public Works Department
After the quake, the government implemented stricter construction codes and set up an earthquake-resistant certification system for buildings, Ou said.
He cited the buildings damaged during the Hualien County earthquake on April 3 last year — most of which were built before 1999 — as proof of the progress in building earthquake-resistant facilities.
The government also reinforced the seismic resistance of bridges, schools and public buildings after the 921 Earthquake, Ou added.
However, the collapse of a residential building in Tainan following an earthquake in 2016, which killed 115 people, showed that the earthquake resistance of private housing needed to be addressed, he said.
The NCREE in 2020 set up a special team to bolster the earthquake resistance of privately owned buildings, identifying and prioritizing high-risk apartment buildings, he said.
The goal is to reinforce the seismic resistance of 30 buildings per year, he said, adding that the team has improved 171 buildings.
Boosting the earthquake resistance of private buildings is a challenge, given the complicated ownership situation and the sharing of expenses among residents, Ou said.
The center is to launch the “Townhouse Earthquake-Resistance Portal” next year, which would allow people to enter the address of a building and view its earthquake-resistance evaluation, he said.
NCREE Deputy Director Chai Juin-fu (柴駿甫) said the center has developed a “5D SmartES” platform, where users can create a virtual model that accurately reflects a physical object, system, city or process in real time.
Kaohsiung and the National Taiwan Museum have joined the platform, Chai said.
Through the platform, Kaohsiung residents can see the age and floor plans of buildings in the city, while museum staff can examine whether a building was damaged after an earthquake, by looking at the 5D model and real-time images captured by detectors, he added.
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