Padang Region Post Earthquake Damage Survey

Background
On the 30th September 2009 a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck West Sumatra in Indonesia causing widespread damage to buildings and the loss of an estimated 1,000 lives in the Padang and Padang Pariaman Districts.  The Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction is supporting a team of Indonesian and international engineers and scientists to collect and analyse damage information needed for future disaster risk reduction in West Sumatra and Indonesia more broadly.  The activity is jointly led by the Center for Disaster Mitigation at the Institute of Technology Bandung and Geoscience Australia.  The survey team arrived in Padang on the 23rd October and includes several members of the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society.

Aims
The survey work has two primary aims.  The first is to examine building failures to ascertain the performance of structures and the factors that may have contributed to survival or failure.  The initial focus of this activity will be on schools and medical facilities but this will broaden to include other building uses and types.  The second and larger activity is directed at systematically surveying complete populations of structures in targeted locations covering a range of felt intensities.  This work is expected to capture statistically useful information on building performance.  Information on residential habitability, occupant injuries and utility service disruption will also be sought.  This information will contribute to:

• understanding the vulnerability of typical Indonesian buildings to earthquake ground motion;
• realistic earthquake risk assessments for national and sub-national disaster risk management;
• the development of better building codes and improved processes for their effective implementation; and ,
• improved contingency planning and earthquake safety education campaigns.

Participation
The survey work will be undertaken in two stages that will extend to the 11th November.  AEES members participating in this activity are:-

Michael Griffith, University of Adelaide
Jerry Vaculik, University of Adelaide
Gerhard Horoschun, Australian Defence Force Academy
Richard Wellar, Cardno
Ken Dale, Geoscience Australia
Martin Wehner, Geoscience Australia

This team is accompanied by two additional liaison/support staff from Geoscience Australia (Matt Hayne and Neil Corby), two engineers from the NZSEE (Jason Ingham of the University of Auckland and Dick Beetham of GNS) and three engineers from the Nanyang Technical University of Singapore (Bing Li, Huan Yi-Nan and Cao Tran).  Complementing this international group is a large team of Indonesian experts and professional engineers.  The combined survey team is expected to number in excess of forty.

Expected Outcomes
Expected outcomes of this activity will include:

• collection, analysis and dissemination of the damage observations to buildings in the West Sumatra region with a particular emphasis on schools and medical facilities;
• an improved understanding within the West Sumatran region and Indonesia of the importance of construction type and quality for earthquake mitigation;
• development of earthquake vulnerability models for buildings in West Sumatra which can then be applied to similar construction types in other parts of Indonesia and Asia; and
• enlarged regional collaboration in the field of earthquake engineering between key universities, professional societies and government agencies to better understand infrastructure vulnerability.