With the news today of the devastating earthquake in Northern Japan, I find myself reminded of our San Francisco earthquake in 1988. The difference in the magnitude of the two quakes is significant and gives us a moment to be thankful for all the hard work the Japanese have done over the years to improve the seismic requirements of the Building Standard Law of Japan.
Living in an earthquake area means preparing for the inevitable. There is never a question about “If” but only “When.” One cannot turn a blind eye to the kind of damage caused by this phenomena if one cares about human life and suffering.
The Japanese starting thinking about seismic requirements for buildings back in the 1920’s, with the revision of Law Enforcement Regulations in 1924. This was the first time the Japanese building codes included seismic design forces.
After World War II, with massive rebuilding necessary in the country, the modern structure of the building code was developed. It includes references to standards from both the Architectural Institute of Japan and the Japan Concrete Institute.
There have been two significant seismic design code revisions to the Building Standard Law of Japan. The first occurred in 1981, when a two-phase earthquake design was introduced. Then a second revision in 2000 allowed for performance based requirements and verification relying on accurate earthquake response and limit states of a building.
There is no doubt that the attention paid to earthquake vulnerability of buildings has saved countless lives in the current massive earthquake off the shores of Japan. Our hearts go out to the victims but our hats are off to a country that has worked so hard to minimize the devastation that this natural phenomena brings.
Contact us with standards questions and comments at info@document-center.com.