Abstract
Turkey is located in a high seismicity region and has suffered extensive losses due to several major earthquakes that struck its various parts in the past two decades. While earthquakes are associated with damage and loss wherever they may occur, the destructive effects of those in Turkey are exacerbated by the large volume of code incompliant buildings constructed with poor materials and workmanship. As a large scale remedial initiative, Turkey has recently embarked upon a grand challenge of retrofitting or renewing all high-risk buildings within the next 20 years. This multi-million building and multi-billion dollar initiative has inevitably raised activity and debates in diverse disciplines regarding all aspects. This paper focuses on the methodologies and developing technologies for rapid condition assessment and structural evaluation of existing buildings in order to identify and prioritize high-risk buildings and for guiding decisions on retrofitting or renewal.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Concrete Solutions - Proceedings of Concrete Solutions, 5th International Conference on Concrete Repair |
| Publisher | CRC Press/Balkema |
| Pages | 11-27 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781138027084 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
| Event | 5th International Conference on Concrete Repair - Belfast, United Kingdom Duration: 1 Sept 2014 → 3 Sept 2014 |
Publication series
| Name | Concrete Solutions - Proceedings of Concrete Solutions, 5th International Conference on Concrete Repair |
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Conference
| Conference | 5th International Conference on Concrete Repair |
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| Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
| City | Belfast |
| Period | 1/09/14 → 3/09/14 |
Funding
The grim picture portrayed by the facts laid out in the preceding section has long called for immediate action in terms of putting greater emphasis and investing more resources on increasing disaster resilience of the building infrastructure in Turkey. During the early years after Kocaeli Earthquake in 1999, the main priority was the recovery of the affected region by means of building housing for those in need of shelter and restoring the interrupted economic activity. In addition to disaster relief funds, the recovery efforts were funded by international aid and special temporary taxes which later became permanent. In the following years, the above-mentioned call was largely subdued by concerns related to the national economy. Seismic mitigation efforts attracted relatively modest attention and budget for more than ten years during which related research studies were skewed more toward seismic risk assessment than development and implementation of effective retrofit/renewal strategies. Isolated cases of larger scale initiatives such as the Istanbul Seismic Risk Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project (ISMEP) must be duly noted ( www.ipkb.gov.tr ). This ongoing project was initiated in 2005 with a €310 million budget which rose to €1 billion 213 million by 2012, all funded by loans from international funding institutions. Expected to be completed in 2018, main components of the project include (a) enhancing emergency preparedness; (b) seismic risk mitigation for priority public facilities; (c) enforcement of building code. Although a large and comprehensive project, the limited retrofit/renewal content of ISMEP is far from addressing the overall need for seismic mitigation.
