Palestine: Earthquake risk mitigation in Palestine and a training course on seismic design of buildings

During the month of January, 2015, the Urban Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction Centre (UPDRC) and the Earth Science and Seismic Engineering Unit (ESSEU), conducted a series of training courses on Seismic Building Design. These courses came as a follow-up of the recommendations and conclusions of the Disaster Risk Mitigation Project in Palestine program (SASPARM) that was led An-Najah National University in partnership with different European partners, which called upon Palestinian institutions to adopt seismic building designs. Consequently, the Engineers Association (EA) developed a comprehensive plan to achieve this goal.

In 2014 the regional EA office made seismic design a mandatory requirement for engineers in the West Bank. To help engineers apply seismic design, a series of capacity building activities were started for engineers to enable them implement these requirements. EA with the support of UPDRC/ ESSEU held training courses in many cities in the West Bank.

Each training course included 50 training hours that covered the following topics:

Part one:

1. Introduction to Seismology (Palestine and its surroundings).
2. Site effect factors. (Local geology and soil conditions).
3. Introduction to Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics.
4. Dynamic response of structures.
5. The influence of architectural and structural configuration on seismic performance of buildings.
6. Eccentricity and torsional consequences in structures.
7. Seismic forces and building codes.
8. Distribution of vertical forces on structural elements (shear walls and pillars)
9. Ductility of reinforced concrete buildings
10. Seismic design of reinforced concrete frames.
11. Seismic design of reinforced concrete shear walls
12. Designing locally common buildings (rock walls- concrete)
13. Elective topics in seismic engineering

Part two:
The use of computers in seismic design through applying SAP 2000 software in designing buildings of reinforced concrete frames, reinforced walls and concrete- stone walls.