Adobe houses are expected to continue providing the housing needs of rural poor people because of their energy efficiency, comfort, and cost effectiveness. Unfortunately traditional adobe constructions are very poor against earthquakes and cause significant loss of life and property. Seismic deficiencies of such structures are mainly due to brittleness and low strength of the blocks; low strength as well as poor bonding of mortar; and lack of structural integrity. Considering affordability, availability, environmental friendliness and easy construction, the current study adopts natural fibers (straw, hemp and jute) and cementing materials (cement and gypsum) as reinforcing materials to improve the strength and ductility of adobe material. Straw improves the ductility of adobe block at the cost of compressive strength. Jute is the most effective among the selected fibers to improve both the ductility and toughness of adobe block. Gypsum improves the strength of adobe block but not the ductility. Similarly, cement is effective for improving the mortar strength only. On the contrary, jute is effective for improving the mortar strength as well as coherence between block and mortar. Higher flexibility, tensile strength and friction of jute might be the reason for its best performance.

View full abstract

  This paper proposes an evaluation method of Regional Safety Factors (RSF) for local voluntary organizations to support their planning and measures for earthquake disaster prevention/mitigation. The RSF is defined as the ratio of the Emergency Response Potential Ability (ERA) to Earthquake Disaster Risk (EDR) of each organization. Against the expected Off Miyagi Earthquake with M_j=7.9, which is one scale larger than the usual assumption model with M_j=7.5, the proposed method is applied to all of the 1,391 organizations in Sendai City. First, based on the evaluated results, variance of earthquake disaster risk over the city-region is clarified. Second, despite higher risks being expected in some organizations, most of their preparedness levels for emergency response were uniformly low. Therefore, a strategy for disaster prevention promotion should be developed considering the spatial risk differences. When a voluntary organization creates a community action plan and/or a local government decides on a performance-based regional planning for earthquake disaster prevention, this proposed method can be expected with long-range monitoring and reassessments depending on the occurrence interval of the target earthquake scenario.

View full abstract

  This study uses structural ritualization theory to analyze an urban ritual event and interprets its potential role in enhancing the capacity of the community to cope with disaster risks. The case study area is the urban community of Lalitpur, Nepal, which organizes an annual ritual event. The study area is located in a dense metropolitan region that is predicted to be under eminent threats of natural hazards such as earthquakes. An extensive field survey accompanied by interviews was carried out with the local respondents, organizers and authorities involved in the ritual event to study the ritualized symbolic practices during the event. Field observations, experience and understanding of the ritualized symbolic practices in the study area are also elucidated. The relative standing (or rank) of ritualized symbolic practices that are ingrained within the social life of people are considered as the capacity to cope with stress by use of the Structural Ritualization Theory (SRT). Then, the study attempts to interpret the urban ritual in terms of improving social capacity to cope with disaster risks in a pre-disaster context.

View full abstract