During retrofitting activities for public buildings against possible earthquakes and disasters, we implement our projects to enhance the seismic performance of public buildings by analyzing not only the structural but also the ground characteristics .
As we have analyzed 1999 Marmara Earthquake and other massive earthquakes worldwide, structural resistance of buildings against earthquakes is of vital importance.
According to the report written by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 2002, nearly 350k buildings in Istanbul are under risk.
Our main aim for retrofitting activities is to make a structure safe enough that it will not face any loss of life happen even in the maximum credible earthquake of relevant area. Within this scope, we design public buildings in such a way that they will stand even in the sharpest earthquake, and we work to bring the structures to the level of keeping serving without any interruption of the services.
At the beginning phase of the project, a series of meetings took place with the participation of Governorship of Istanbul, Istanbul Provincial Directorate for National Education, stakeholder institutions, and academicians. An inventory for public buildings was created and sectoral criteria have been determined to prioritize these buildings (access during disaster, technical features of buildings, vulnerability assessment, capacity in terms of user and serviced population, distance to fault line, importance in disaster management plan, etc). Accordingly, all public buildings were prioritized and listed for either retrofitting or demolishment.
After feasibility studies for public buildings throughout Istanbul, a simple cost benefit method is used by ISMEP to decide whether to retrofit or reconstruction. If the cost of retrofitting does not exceed 40% of the cost of reconstruction, retrofitting is preferred. Then, retrofitting design works and implementation are started.
As part of the efforts to strengthen risky buildings, we have done a lot of work covering all districts of Istanbul since 2006.
Within this framework, the number of public buildings retrofitted by January 2019 is as follows;
| RETROFITTING WORKS | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BUILDING TYPES | COMPLETED | ONGOING | TENDER | TOTAL | ||||
| Campus | Buildings | Campus | Buildings | Campus | Buildings | Campus | Buildings | |
| SCHOOLS | 758 | 918 | 11 | 14 | 769 | 932 | ||
| HOSPITALS | 12 | 48 | 12 | 48 | ||||
| POLYCLINIC & HEALTH CARE CENTER | 59 | 59 | 59 | 59 | ||||
| ADMINISTRATIVE | 25 | 43 | 25 | 43 | ||||
| DORMITORY | 12 | 28 | 12 | 28 | ||||
| SOCIAL SERVICE BUILDS | 8 | 16 | 8 | 16 | ||||
| TOTAL | 874 | 1112 | 11 | 14 | 885 | 1126 | ||
The details of some of our works can be found in the links below.
