Earthquake resistant schools

All the cities where we acquired site class data have a history of seismic and tsunami disasters that claimed tens of thousands of lives and huge losses in infrastructure, particularly schools. These losses to nature have played out recently in each of the areas we investigated. Earthquakes and a tsunami in Java over the past 20 years have claimed around 10,000 lives, loss of thousands of schools and displaced hundreds of thousands of people due to damage to homes, schools, and businesses.

 

The 2018 earthquake in Lombok claimed around 500 lives and destroyed at least 455 schools. Around 400,000 persons were displaced and still inhabit refugee camps that we visited.

 

In Timor 3 earthquakes in 2021, although distant from the capital, severely damaged some new construction, such as the finance building in Dili.

 

In Ambon and Seram a moderate earthquake in 2019 destroyed over 7000 buildings including 172 schools. Poor building construction in locations with high seismic amplification is the cause of most of the losses.

 

The measurements we provide assist densely populated cities to identify who is most at risk of seismic wave amplification, which in Ambon are as high 5x and Timor-Leste as high as 10x.

 

We also teamed with Build Change to initiate build-back-better protocols for the regions.