Are Maltese buildings ready for earthquakes?

Domestic buildings have largely retained their traditional construction methodology, making them particularly vulnerable to earthquakes due to their “fragile structural response,” but regulations for their seismic design are finally in the making, according to one expert.

While high-rise development work in Malta has involved seismic design, the same cannot be said for low to medium-sized buildings, which remain earthquake-prone, according to Professor Mark Bonello, who heads the university’s Department of Civil and Structural Engineering at the college. For the built environment.

The “seismic vulnerability” of so-called unreinforced masonry buildings (URMs) is exacerbated by open basements for parking, according to local planning policies.

Mark Bonello

This creates a “soft floors effect” at the underground level due to the sudden decrease in the lateral stiffness of these edifices, Bonello explained.

He added that buildings using load-bearing URM constructions, supporting on-site reinforced concrete panels, are “particularly vulnerable to seismic events due to their brittle and non-ductile structural response.”

20 years in the making

Nearly 20 years ago, the Times of Malta reported that buildings in the country did not provide any protection against seismic activity, with industry professionals saying it was time for new regulations to take effect.

Architect Denis Camilleri, author of the study “Minimizing Malta’s Risks from Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tsunami Damage,” said in 2003 that the country could not afford to wait for a major disaster before strengthening strategic preparedness and seriously managing mitigation.

He wondered why the building regulations, which were drafted in 1995, keeping in mind the need to design buildings in a seismic manner, had not yet been implemented.

Practically all of Malta’s buildings could have been affected in the event of a very strong earthquake since there is no building code and designs have not been submitted for review, meaning that, structurally speaking, no one is responsible in the event of damage.

Specialists had insisted that erecting buildings to counteract tremors should be the rule, not the exception.

Now, two decades later, the seismic design of buildings is “actively” being discussed by a working group of experts under the auspices of the Building Industry Advisory Board.

Bonello, a member of the group, said he was in the process of drafting a position paper for the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), with the ultimate goal of drafting and promulgating building regulations related to seismic design for local buildings.

He said the position paper would set out the working group’s vision of how building methodologies and permitted structural systems should be organized, using design codes, such as the European Structural Code, to be able to “resist lateral horizontal forces due to seismic events and wind storms in the presence of vertical gravity loading”.

The plan is for this draft building regulations to be discussed with all industry stakeholders and released for public consultation prior to being adopted by the BCA.

Things are better than before

When asked if there have been any improvements in the way buildings are constructed, particularly with regard to earthquake resistance, Bonello noted several developments in the local construction industry over the past 20 years.

For the past 10 years, he said, the university’s School of the Built Environment has been researching the exposure of URM’s soft basement buildings.

Preliminary results show that they “require special attention with regard to their seismic resistance, especially when they are built on soft ground such as clay rather than rock”.

The research indicated that when they form part of a URM building, surrounded by streets within an urban development, they perform better than if they were isolated.

“It has also been observed that the use of terminal and perpendicular ties and supporting structural elements within URM buildings improves their lateral stability and increases their resistance to disproportionate structural collapse,” he explained.

“Overall, the quality of construction materials and workmanship used on site in the local industry has improved over the past 20 years and cannot be considered shoddy,” Bonello said.

“But what has been poorly done in recent years is the way construction has been carried out alongside the properties, particularly in relation to excavations near the adjacent third party walls, which has resulted in structural collapse of the property and even fatalities.”

Bonello said tall buildings are “well-designed” and are expected to perform well during a seismic event and withstand horizontal lateral seismic forces.

This category of buildings “necessitated a coordinated, multidisciplinary engineering design approach which had to include their seismic design, the use of complex and sophisticated structural systems, constructed using structural steelwork and reinforced concrete frames supporting precast concrete suspended panels.

“Given that the majority of construction work over the past 20 years falls within this category of buildings, the corresponding structural response during an earthquake is of particular importance,” he said.

“It is important to design buildings that are able to withstand the lateral horizontal forces caused by earthquakes, just as it is expected that such buildings must also be able to withstand vertical gravitational loads due to self-weight and imposed loading.”

Chances of an earthquake

Seismologist Pauline Galea says that strong earthquakes, although not frequently, may occur from several sources around the Maltese islands, either from large earthquakes in Sicily, or even Greece, as well as from moderate earthquakes on faults closer to Malta.

The island was hit by an earthquake measuring four on the Richter scale on July 7, 2003, although it did not cause any structural damage.

The associate professor in the university’s Department of Earth Sciences acknowledged that “rapidly constructed apartment buildings that do not comply with earthquake-resistant designs are at particular risk.”

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