HOW CAN STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS CONTRIBUTE TOWARDS DISASTER MITIGATION?

Early 19th century London was a public health disaster; river Thames was literally an open sewer. Cholera epidemics - along with tuberculosis, typhoid, dysentery and smallpox -were the primary cause of death. They were thought of as everyday risks of living; until some wise men and a Civil Engineer by the name of Joseph Bazalgatte brought to an end that stream of thought. The life of the common man was brought to a new high as a consequence of this sanitary revolution. As those people thought then, it is now the time for us to stop being complacent about disasters and aim high; zero loss of life, minimum property damage from disasters. Yet again the role of engineers will be of paramount importance. Disaster Mitigation As hard as it is to predict a disaster, it is difficult to prevent disasters from happening. Although we are slowly unraveling the mysteries of nature, it never fails to surprise us; 1958 flooding of Zambezi during construction of Kariba dam, 2010 Christchurch earthquake, 2013 Russian meteor shower. Each one of them surpassed the worst possible scenario, setup by means of human expertise, experience and expectation. There is no denying the possibility of our own township being hit by a disaster, better yet the worst kind. The United Nations is in the forefront in calling for the safety of human lives and property in the face of rapidly increasing odds for the world to be hit by a major disasterbreaking records ,among other things we'd rather see unshattered. According to them the aim is to achieve a significant reduction in the loss of life and material damage caused by disaster. Disaster Management Models There are several disaster management models which are helpful in responding to disasters. The traditional model represents a cyclic process where it shows a pre-disaster risk reduction phase and post-disaster Figure 1: Traditional Model of Disaster Management recovery phase. A second model crunch/release model- identifies a disaster as the situation where a hazard meets vulnerability. Both these models are important in their own right and are helpful in understanding the role of structural engineering in disaster mitigation. Role of a structural engineer scope under the traditional view We cannot restrict the role of a Structural Engineer to a section of disaster mitigation we can contribute across the full spectrum of disaster management. Structural Engineers have a role not only in designing disaster resistant structures, but also in rescue efforts in collapsed structures, immediate rehabilitation of infrastructure and reconstruction.

Pre-disaster risk reduction activities are where the contribution from structural engineers is significant. Work in this could be better guided by the crunch/release model which will be explained in the due cause of the text. Role of the Structural Engineer in postdisaster recovery phase is as much important as any other professional role. Immediate rescue efforts after a disaster will include evacuation of people from unstable structures -after an earthquake, landslide, tsunami, - or accessing places with limited infrastructure after a flood, tsunami. Earthquakes and landslide produces unstable structures and soil conditions. Immediate rescue teams from military forces or fire rescue are under risk in accessing such places they put their lives in risk to rescue people they do not even know. A Structural Engineers input will be valuable in such cases to take precautionary measures and temporarily strengthen structures and underlying soil if required. This can reduce the risk on rescue personal and maybe even increase the chance of survival of the trapped people - by improving the safe access period to structures. To do this Structural Engineers should be trained to undertake quick visual assessment of a partially damaged structure and give an expert opinion. It is also possible that roads are damaged or flooded and the bridges have collapsed. Providing alternative temporary access is of utmost importance for rehabilitation after a disaster- although Sri Lanka was one of the hardest hit countries by 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami it recovered quickly, thanks largely to the rapid bridge replacements and road clearance. Provision of rapid access allows for mobilization of medical and other basic requirements to people hit by the disaster. After the stages of immediate assistance the hype about the disaster dials down, but the

Figure 2: Road washed away during flooding, limiting access to disaster hit areas. lives have to continue. It is common - in many developing countries - to see people in relief camps, years after a disaster has struck. Importance of bringing back the city to life as soon as practicable- can never be overstated. The reconstruction effort is threefoldessential infrastructure, public facilities, residencies. All these have to be completed simultaneously. Rehabilitation of infrastructure may require renovation or complete reconstruction. Structural Engineers will be required to assess the requirement and propose and carry out a structurally and economically viable solution. The residential structures pose a different challenge. Although the short term requirement is to bring the house up to a standard that allows resettlement, in long term the house may be required to be further expanded- even to luxurious living standards. So the structural engineer will be required to look at the social aspects of the situation also. Rapidly deployable permanent housing units are a newly explored area. This would be a significant step towards rapid rehabilitation.

Role of a structural engineer crunch and release The crunch and release model describes a disaster as the situation where a fragile situation structural, natural, social, economic or personal- meets a hazard earthquake, high wind, flood or drought. Thus the way to prevent a disaster is to release the pressure- from the hazard and fragility- on the element at risk physical property, economy, or society. This model identifies the built environment as an element at risk. So it is in our Structural Engineers hand to come up with ways to reduce hazards and reduce fragility of built environment.

b. Eliminate any activity that supports creating a hazard e.g. improper land use will increase the possibility of a flood event. This second category should be looked into as an integral part of design like the emphasis on environmental performance and health and safety - but not as a separate line of work. Design of disaster resistant structures as obvious to anyone- would be fully under the scope of Structural Engineering. Although there is an economical consideration when strengthening a structure to withstand a disaster force, there is no point in putting peoples life at risk at the current point in time when no one is certain of a place free from disasters. Disaster resistance in some peoples view- should be a compulsory design consideration. Further there is a certain portion of deaths occurring not due to disaster itself, but due to structures falling on. Along this line, research has been done to retrofit masonry structures in Middle Eastern countries where earthquake dislodges heavy masonry blocks which are heavy enough to cause severe damage to people. They have proposed to use a Polypropylene net on either side of the block work covered by a finishing mortarto effectively hold the block work as a single integral unit. It is Structural Engineers responsibility to even predict such cases and further reduce casualties. A lot of research work is being done in the area of vulnerability of structures due to natural disasters. Data collected from previous disaster situations provide data to create vulnerability curves which set the probability of a specified damage level (e.g. non- structural damage, complete collapse) to structure at different values of a demand parameter related to the disaster in

Figure 3: Crunch Model of Disaster Mitigation Control of hazards is not an easy task at some situations earthquakes, cyclones - but for some hazards it is a possibility -landslides, floods and there are some hazards which can be avoided by appropriate land usage tsunamis, floods. It is important to note that none of these mean complete elimination of hazards. The two broader categories of activities Structural Engineers can get involved in to control hazards are, a. Research -to get a broader understanding of the mechanism of hazards.

consideration (e.g. ground acceleration, tsunami wave height). These can be used to come up with collapse mechanisms for structures and design criterion and design codes for disaster resistant structures. This data are always insightful as disaster situations are always dynamic and it is very much difficult to distinguish what caused the collapse. Structural Engineer the human being All those professional work of a structural engineer -at the face of disaster- is in addition to the social being he is. All of us have a social responsibility and a capacity to act so to help out a person in need and not to put them in harms way. Our ability to be a part of a community in essence- will push us to act in a way that will help out our fellow beings , be it professional work or -purely- an 'in the moment' act.

Engineers to Take on The Tasks of Disaster Mitigation. In Dissanayake R, Jayasinghe M.T.R, Mendis P.A, Fernando S. International Conference on Structural Engineering, Construction and Management 2011. December 15 -17. Earls Regency Hotel, Kandy. p vii - xv Sathiparan N. 2012. SSESL Monthly Question Time. Retrofitting of Masonry Buildings under Seismic Loading. May 29. IESL Auditorium

Figure 4: The Human Side in the Face of Disaster References: Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre. Disaster Risk Management & Mitigation. [online] Available from www.wyf.org.my/DRM.pdf [Accessed April 08 2013] Coburn A.W, Spence R.J.S, Pomonis A. Disaster Mitigation, 2nd ed., Nelson Lam. 2011. Built Infrastructure in Extreme Events: Preparing Structural