Disaster Resilience of School Infrastructure

PRISMH: Philippines Resilience of Schools to Multi-Hazard

Introduction

The project, led by Prof Dina D’Ayala, Dr Carmine Galasso and Arash Nassirpour, aims to develop an advanced resilience assessment framework for school infrastructure subjected to multiple natural hazards in the Philippines. The project investigates the effectiveness of buildings retrofit measures and social preparedness measures as means of preventing casualties, reducing economic losses and maintaining functionality of the school infrastructure and its role within the community in the event of natural disasters. In particular the project addresses risks from seismic, strong wind and flood hazards. The resilience assessment protocol will be used by civil protection and school authorities to improve their preparedness and implementation.

The PRISMH project is funded by the British Council (Newton Fund Grant Agreement Institutional Links) and Philippines’s Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for 24 months starting from 1st April 2017.

Project Objectives

Assess the impact of earthquakes, strong wind and flood on school buildings through purpose developed vulnerability models;
Validate against observations of recent events (e.g. 2013 Bohol Earthquake and Typhoon Haiyan);
Measure Potential Resilience improvements obtained by retrofitting school buildings and promoting a disaster risk reduction culture;
Escalate Safer Schools Culture to safer community by evaluating the role of school infrastructure in post disaster recovery;
Develop Practical Tools for multi-hazards impact assessment and resilience improvement and demonstrate their capabilities in the Philippines.

As part of the PRISMH project, a two day workshop on Philippine's natural hazards and vulnerability of school infrastructure was conducted in Feb. 2018. Members of the industry, stakeholders and Philippine's Department of Education (DepEd) participated in this workshop.

A two-day workshop on Structural Mitigation & Increasing Resilience of Schools to Multi-Hazard has been conducted in Manila-Philippines by the UCL EPICentre team in collaboration with De La Salle University and Xavier University as part of the PRISMH project (29-30 April 2019).