Singapore’s Temasek funds quake-resistant school buildings

MANILA, Philippines -Temasek Foundation, a Singapore-based philanthropic organization, is funding a training and capacity-building program to bring earthquake resistance technology to the Philippines.

Specifically, the program will involve training for seismic strengthening for masters and local builders in Luzon and the Visayas.

It will be implemented with the University of the Philippines-Diliman, with support from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), Department of Education (DepEd), and the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

Over a one-year period, the Nanyang Technological University (School of Civil and Environmental Engineering) of Singapore will provide training for some 300 government engineers, university structural engineering faculty members and graduate students, as well as local builders, to employ earthquake-resistant confined masonry construction and seismic strengthening techniques on 12 public school buildings.

Gerald Yeo, Temasek Foundation’s director for programs and partnership, said that the 12 schools located in six earthquake-prone cities and provinces were earlier identified by Phivolcs.

Two of the beneficiaries are Cabatuan National Comprehensive High School in Cabatuan town and another barangay schoo, both in Iloilo province.

In Cabatuan high school, Temasek and EC Structural Composites, Inc., the foundation’s local partner and training facilitator, have worked to retrofit a six-classroom, one storey building that housed the school’s Social Studies department.

Why retrofitting? “It’s cost effective than building a new one yet, with the new technology, it would still be resistant to seismic activities,” Yeo said.

Vikram Rajola of Nanyang TU said that they would be introducing techniques that would help to increase earthquake resistance and mitigate their seismic risks that these buildings face.

“And in so doing, mitigate risks and possible loss of lives and educational opportunities for school-going children using these buildings,” Rajola added.

For the 12 schools, Yeo said that they would be committing S$1.7 million.*