Establishment of Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit Data Bank of Elementary School Buildings in Taiwan

Establishment of Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit Data Bank of Elementary School Buildings in Taiwan

Since 2003, the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering(NCREE) has accepted the project from the Department of Elementary Education(DEE) to establish procedure on seismic capacity upgrading in Taiwan’s elementary school buildings. The said procedure can be divided into four stages, namely:(1) simple survey,(2) preliminary evaluation,(3) detailed evaluation, and(4) retrofit design with construction. The simple survey was designed to be applied by school administrators and has been applied already in Taipei city and county. Analysis of simple survey data can provide reference to determine which school buildings have doubtful seismic capacities. These selected school buildings can then be sent to the next steps for preliminary evaluation, detailed evaluation or even retrofit design with construction which will be carried out by professional engineers. In the past few years, NCREE has set up the so-called “Seismic Information Web of School Buildings” for the requirement of DEE. This web includes collections into a one unique platform of the simple survey, preliminary evaluation, detailed evaluation, and retrofit design with construction. In this year, NCREE will assist all city and county governments to undertake simple survey, preliminary evaluation, and detailed evaluation and retrofit design with construction of elementary school buildings. And the so-called “overall school building investigation” will be processed in this year. The checklist of retrofit design with construction will be so designed such that data will be received through the network. Through the established web platform, the collected data can be provided to education departments, researchers and professional engineers to study about elementary school buildings. Therefore, the budget from the national government can be used effectively through the study of the collected data in the web.