Earthquake resistant gate to include apartments

By Wu Bo-hsuan and William Hetherington/Staff Reporter and Staff Writer

The National Center for Research in Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) said it will next year launch an updated version of Townhouse's earthquake resilience portal to include information on residential buildings.

The portal provides information on seismic risks for homes of five stories or less. Since about 70% of Taiwan's population lives in some form of multi-unit residential buildings, and more than 6 million housing units across the country are more than 30 years old, there is an urgent need for an updated portal to include information on those buildings, the National Center for Religious Education said.

“The center has been studying nationwide seismic intensity data, such as basin effects, seismic wave amplification and soil conditions,” said Yu Chen, director of the National Center for Environmental Education. “At the same time, we are developing earthquake resistance technologies and formulating structural safety standards.”

Photo courtesy of Kaohsiung Public Works Office

The National Center for Religious and Moral Education was instrumental in efforts to reinforce thousands of school structures following the 921 earthquake, when a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan in the early morning hours of September 21, 1999.

However, Yu said that the collapse of the Weiguan Jinlong residential complex due to a 6.6-magnitude earthquake on February 6, 2016, highlighted the urgent need to assess the seismic capacity of the country's old private residences.

The building collapse led to the deaths of 115 people.

Partly in response to the Weijuan incident, the National Religious Education and Religious Education Commission in 2020 established a project office tasked with strengthening vulnerable buildings and prioritizing high-risk multi-unit housing complexes, he said, adding that the office has strengthened 171 buildings so far.

It also created the portal so people living in private homes can check the earthquake vulnerability of their buildings and use that information to determine whether building reinforcements are necessary, Yu said.

The apartment building version of the portal will allow residents to look up structural hazards in their buildings, he said.

“However, we acknowledge that the ownership structures of older buildings are often complex, and seismic retrofits require additional spending by all residents,” Yu said, adding that the building assessment alone could cost between tens of thousands and several hundred thousand New Taiwan dollars, and reinforcement work could cost residents up to NT$200,000 per unit.

“The high costs, combined with the fact that design work takes several months and construction can take up to half a year, means many homeowners are unwilling to move forward,” he said.

Separately, Deputy Director of the National Center for Vocational Education and Training Zhai Chunfu (柴駿甫) said that artificial intelligence and smart city technologies that integrate drone imagery, satellite data, 6G, virtual reality, big data, image recognition and cloud computing make cities safer and improve the efficiency of urban services.

He cited as an example the 5D smart city platform SmartES in Kaohsiung, which can support flood control, disaster prevention, landslide monitoring, traffic flow optimization, construction site management, smart healthcare and tourism.

“For example, during a recent heavy rain, the system successfully predicted slope collapse in Kaohsiung, demonstrating its ability to predict disasters,” he said. “This allows decision makers – even those far away – to issue disaster response instructions immediately.”

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