Researches

Natural disasters hit suddenly and leave behind live serious damages by physical injury, death and loss of properties. One of the most outstanding natural disasters is the earthquake (Van Westen et al. 2006). Earthquake damages to people are generally caused when the seismic waves reach the bottom surface mostly around where human built structures are located. Most of the damages and death are because of the structure collapsing and also construction practices during the earthquakes (Primer on Natural Hazard Management in Integrated Regional Development Planning).

Introduction

Geologists have done a lot of research to predict and possibly to warn about impending earthquake. Countries such as Japan, Iran, Chile, and Indonesia and many more are on the subduction zones a tectonic setting that causes many deadly earthquakes. Depending on how strong the buildings are designed in case of earthquake these countries face high numbers of injuries constantly (USGS digital spectral Library).

Developed countries have come up with great solutions in terms of system of constructions reduce damages to people and cities, even though it doesn’t work 100% of the time, but its still protects people and their belongings. But Developing countries are still struggling, and many people are suffering and losing their families and properties after each earthquake.

Statement of the problem

Human shelters addressed people basic needs for centuries investigating new innovative ways to build housing in earthquake prone areas may result in less damage and suffering. This thesis is going to investigate the recent earthquake damages in Iran and attempts to propose alternatives to a safer built environment. My country of origin is Iran, through out all these years that I lived in Iran saw a lot of people are suffering after each earthquake, and it’s damaging a lot of cities. Destroying people’s life all the time made me think to help them one day, now it is the best time for me to get engage with this big problem in my country, focusing on the recent earthquake damages and find out some solutions.

What causes most earthquakes is basically when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another. And when these two slides on top of each other, is called the faults. The Earth is broken up into plates and these plates keep slowly moving around, which are called tectonic plates. The edges of these plates are called plate boundaries and those are made up of many faults. When these boundaries stock while they’re moving and here is when an earthquake happens and we can feel the earth’s moving. The reason that the earth shakes is because of the energy that causes the blocks to slide on each other, get stored. Once this energy gets released the seismic waves shake the earth when they move through it. And this is when it reaches the earth surface and everything starts shaking (The geology of earthquakes). IIEES (international Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology) researches, The Iranian land is one of the seismically active areas known in the world that has been gone thorough a lot of earthquakes over the years (USGS.org).

In fact we are not able to make any changes in earth’s movements, but what we can do is design earthquake resistant structures to reduce the amount of damages to people and cities located on earthquake zones. Based on studies in past earthquakes in Iran, delicate in construction is the major damage caused in this area. Magnitude (the size of the earthquake) 6 is very common on active zone areas like Iran, but when this considered earthquake happens closer to the built areas (like cities) causes a lot of damages and the reason is they are not prepared for this level of shaking. The 2009 earthquake in Pandang, Indonesia was one of the examples that caused a lot of damages to the buildings by shaking the ground. In that earthquake 600 people died under mud and rock falling down (vigny 2009).

As a matter of fact, landslides triggered by earthquakes often cause more loss than earthquakes themselves Believing that with fewer causes we can save more lives and reduce more human suffering, this thesis will investigate the materials and methods that we can use to reduce these damages (Becky Oskin 2013, National geographic).

There are some countries such as Mexico and Japan that have the alarm systems, which can sense when the earthquake occur and also can measure the magnitude of shaking. It has been around since 1991 in Mexico and this system gets more than 60 seconds to warn because of the source that is about 186 miles. Having this kind of system and also educating people to save their lives in case of emergency can be very helpful. Because a lot of these miss responding to earthquakes is cause by lack of knowledge (National Geographic).

Civil engineers, planning agencies and also the insurance industries have models and programs to estimate the amount of the earthquake loss. And based on their results the quality and quantity of the progress depends on where its located and how close is it to the fault lines (USGS). What an architect does in this case is, to keep people safe and design spaces that they feel comfortable and protected.

Iran is located in the active earthquake prone, that has experienced more that 130 powerful earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 or more, that 25 of them was just in the past 100 years that killed more than 200,000 and damaged a lot of places, which is also presented in table 1. And left behind many economical damages, in villages and towns that are already struggling poverty (akhavan 2006).  

Several deadly earthquakes have hit Iran in recent years, many of which have caused widespread devastation. For example, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake hit the south of Iran in “Bushehr” last couple of months killing 39 people and injuring around 850. The deadliest quake in the country was in June 1990. It measured 7.7 on the Richter scale, killed around 37,000 people and injured 100,000. The worst earthquake in recent times hit a southeastern province in December 2003, killing 31,000 people and destroying the city of Bam's ancient mud-built citadel (PLOS Currents Disasters. 2013 May 1).

After this earthquake 35.000 housing units were destroyed which is 63% of all the houses in the area (NDGI 2005). The reconstruction took more than 3 years, which is questioning because of planning and poor quality (Arsalan 2007).

After the shaking causing of earthquake, victims need to start their regular life as soon as possible. Losing families and properties can already be harmful and exhausting so the best thing that they can do is restart living their lives. In order to that they need their privacy. At this time the best option is Transitional shelters until permanent housing plan would start. Obviously reconstruction of housing takes a lot more time. This will help them not just to have more time to rebuild their houses, but to recover from the mega disaster and their lives (World Bank, Recovery Planning).

This thesis is going to investigate the quality of housing spaces and adjust social and economic conditions of living space In form of people need. And it would be in longer time while victims are at the transitional shelters.