Mitigating natural events to avoid disaster in public school buildings: seismic retrofitting of SDN 42 Korong Gadang

¹ Architectural Engineering Department, California Polytechnic State University, 1 Grand Ave., San Luis Obispo, CA 93407, USA
² Build Change, Jl. Kemuning No. 2, Komplek Perumahan Dangau Teduh, Padang, 25162, Indonesia
² Build Change, 535 16th St., Suite 605, Denver, CO 80202, USA

^* Corresponding author: laura@buildchange.org

Abstract

With over 50 million students, Indonesia has the fourth largest education system in the world. The first twelve years of education are compulsory for all citizens. The students, together with over 3 million teachers spend six (or five in some cases) days a week at over 300,000 schools, typically from 6:30 AM to 2 (or 3) PM. Geographically, Indonesia is traversed by the infamous “ring of fire” and prone to natural events resulting from the tectonic plate movements of the Australian Plate from the South, the Eurasian and Sunda Plates from the North and the Philippine Plate from the East. Left unmitigated, these natural events would lead to natural disasters emanating from resulting earthquakes and leading to tsunamis, landslides, the collapse of building structures and failure of lifelines (roads, pipelines, electrical grid, etc.). In an effort to provide disaster-safe schools, the National Agency for Disaster Management has required that school facilities be a community center in case of disasters and serve as emergency shelters. Retrofit of existing buildings will be needed to comply with government guidelines. This paper presents a case study of the determination of structural deficiencies of an existing school building in SDN 42 Korong Gadang, Padang, West Sumatra and implementation of a seismic retrofit (design and construction) at the same building to mitigate potential earthquake disaster.