Mandalay city earthquake risk reduction action planning workshop

Background

Earthquake Risk in Myanmar

Due to its geographic location along the active collision and subduction zone of the Indo-Eurasian plate boundary and the Burma microplate, Myanmar is prone to earthquakes. According to the hazard profile of Myanmar, a swath of land in the Northern and Central region in the country falls into destructive (V) to strong (III) seismic zone categories.

Urban Earthquake Risk in Mandalay

Mandalay lies along the Sagaing fault, an active strike-slip fault which runs from north to south in Myanmar. Past earthquakes in Myanmar have highlighted the high degree of vulnerability in urban areas, resulting in the loss of many lives. In Myanmar many of the major urban centers such as Yangon, Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw, Sagaing, Bago, and Taungoo have experienced strong to destructive earthquakes in the past. They are also prone to recurrent hydro-meteorological and fire disasters.

Over the past three decades, the city has expanded economically, resulting in settlements along flood prone and liquefiable areas  prone to severe ground shaking. Although past earthquake records are few, there has been documentation of many earthquake events around Mandalay. Recent studies reveal that the two central fault segments in Myanmar, Sagaing fault and Kyaukkyan fault, could trigger future earthquakes in the region.

Concerted efforts towards risk reduction

Given the imminent risk of major earthquake in the region, the Government of Myanmar and Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC) have embarked on structural and nonstructural mitigation measures such as earthquake risk assessment and risk awareness projects.  However there is a need to develop a time-bound, multi-stakeholder, multi-pronged risk reduction strategy to reduce existing earthquake risk as well as to guide development interventions to reduce earthquake risk.

About the workshop

As a first step towards a long term risk reduction strategy, the goal of the Mandalay City Earthquake Risk Reduction Action Planning workshop is to identify the critical needs (structural, nonstructural measures including those of response and recovery planning) through a participatory planning approach. Furthermore, the workshop aims to forge partnership among various stakeholders to develop and support implementation of the action plan. The workshop will showcase similar experiences and practices from the region to guide the action plan process.