Seismic Design Standard for Malaysia and the Risk of Earthquake to Current Buildings towards Forensic Earthquake Engineering

This research possesses a great deal of difficult mathematical analysis, including earthquake catalog analysis, ground motion models, and probabilistic mathematical formulations. A review of the earthquake catalog reveals that the greatest earthquake ever recorded in Sabah occurred in 1923, with a magnitude of 6.6. Meanwhile, the first documented earthquake was in 1902. Since then, four earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 have been recorded, the most recent occurring in 2015. Because of Sabah's low seismic activity, the characteristics of the faults that trigger these earthquakes are still poorly understood. Given the presence of several earthquake centers in Sabah, buildings should be designed to withstand earthquakes. Since the epicenters are dispersed widely throughout Sabah, seismic hazard analysis must employ probabilistic approaches to represent these faults as line sources, area sources, and point sources. This standard issuance project requires historic structures to be renovated using earthquake-resistant technology. The resilience of existing buildings to earthquakes must be re-examined, hence research to assess the vulnerability of existing buildings was conducted.

Based on seismic vulnerability examinations of Sabah buildings, three structures were identified as having Grade 1 damageability. Kota Kinabalu has one building, and Ranau has two. Grade 2 damage is projected in all studied sites, except for Kota Marudu and Kudat, which have 49 buildings. The district with the most Grade 2 buildings is Kota Kinabalu. There are almost 260 buildings that have been classified as Grade 3 damageable. Similarly, Kota Kinabalu has the most buildings in this grade, totaling 93. Most buildings (234 in total) are classified as Grade 4. The total number of buildings surveyed was 145, mostly in Kota Kinabalu. Surprisingly, Grade 4 has the highest damageability rating among the grades. With a rapidly increasing number of medium- to high-rise buildings in this region, these findings underscore the need to implement seismic design for these new structures.

Assoc. Prof. Ir. Ts. Dr Noor Sheena is a researcher in the Faculty of Engineering and the head of the Earthquake and Tsunami cluster at the Natural Disaster Research Centre (NDRC), Universiti Malaysia Sabah. She is involved in community initiatives that provide exposure and early education about earthquake hazards. Many of her talks were about "Earthquake Education in Engineering Science". She has also shared her expertise in the media, particularly on natural disasters, such as 'A Lesson to Shake Us All' by The Star, 'Three places need to execute earthquake building design' by Utusan Borneo, and 'Understanding ground movement on Mount Kinabalu' by Astro Awani. She will soon take a sabbatical at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) to deepen her understanding of seismic risk. She is particularly interested in forensic earthquake engineering that uses Metal Magnetic Memory (MMM) to detect internal fractures, voids, or delamination in concrete beams and columns. It can effectively detect concealed damage deep inside the structure and fatigue in materials.

Further reading:
https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings13020318
https://doi.org/10.55549/epstem.1409412
https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings13061500