Safety Factors in Public Buildings against Earthquake Risk in the City of Padang, Indonesia

Abstract Earthquake resistant structures for public buildings should be designed and built whereby they are supposed to withstand earthquake with minimum damage and without catastrophe collapse. As no structure can be entirely immune to damage due to earthquake, the goal of earthquake resilient building is to ensure that the risk of collapse can be minimized or reduced. Therefore, there is a need to identify all factors that could contribute to the risk of failures due to earthquake especially on public buildings. Based on code of practice, earthquake building resistant structures are intended to withstand the largest possible earthquake which is likely to occur in a particular area where in this paper discussed the study of earthquake in Padang, Indonesia. This paper presents on safety factors that need to be considered in the analysis and design of public building for the city of Padang, Indonesia due to earthquake. Recently, there are several design approaches in earthquake engineering studies such as experimental results, computer simulations and observations from past earthquakes to understand the performance of the damaged building. However, the data from past earthquake that occurred in Padang, Indonesia is to be analyzed so that the safety factors on the risk of the public building can be well understood. Factors such as height of building, type of structures, material of construction, types of soil, and method of construction are considered in this study. The research findings on the city of Padang, Indonesia have concluded that all new buildings should be designed base on earthquake code of practice where the use of base isolator and stiff construction are to be introduced for public building structures.