RISKS OF SEISMIC ACTIVITIES ON BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN NIGERIA
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Every building is designed to be safe and meet certain needs in order to prevent collapse. Factors leading to
building collapse could be natural or man-made. Results of collapse of buildings are numerous; they include
death, disability of victims, destruction of properties, economic losses, etc. Until recently, Nigeria was believed
to be aseismic due its distance away from major earthquake zones. However, modern seismic activities have
led to the prediction of a major earthquake occurrence in Nigeria in the future. This study seeks to estimate the
risks and impact of seismic hazard on the built environment in Lagos State, Nigeria. Assuming a uniform
seismic intensity measure for the study area, a model is created that estimates the number of casualties and
built area that would be affected by earthquakes of different ground motions. Monte Carlo simulation method
is used in MATLAB software to draw random data of building area, occupancy limits, construction quality
and failure probability for the computational analysis. The results showed that an average seismic intensity
measure of 0.4g will affect between 1000-1060 km2 of building area. At the same intensity, between 6.5-6.9
million of a total population of 21 million people residing in Lagos State will be affected. These huge losses
therefore call for urgent mitigating activities such as the design and construction of seismic resistant buildings
to reduce risks of damages when earthquake occur
Keywords
TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)