Browsing by Author "Thamboo, J"

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Long-term recovery from the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami in two Sri Lankan east coast municipalities
(Elsevier Ltd, 2026-01) Thamboo, J; Josiah, R; Saja, A; Salah, P; Rossetto, T; Dias, P
Sri Lanka was the second most affected country after Indonesia, in the 2004 Boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami (IOT). A study mission was therefore carried out twenty years after the 2004 IOT to assess the recovery of the affected regions, especially in the Eastern region of Sri Lanka, focusing on two of the most affected municipalities, i.e. Kalmunai and Batticaloa. The social and infrastructure characteristics of resettlements/relocations/new settlements in the affected regions, presence of critical infrastructure, preparedness and early warning systems installed have been assessed. It was observed that similar approaches have been adopted to plan the community relocation in both of these municipalities, while the significant reemergence of residential and commercial developments in the coastal stretches of Kalmunai municipality have been noted. Exposure analyses have revealed that there are still some critical infrastructure situated in the tsunami hazard zones. It can be construed that these municipalities have recovered from the physical losses incurred, and spatial planning is in place for future developments considering the tsunami risk. Challenges and opportunities from their differing geographical contexts appear to have been judiciously handled. However, shortcomings are noted in actual implementation due to various reasons, such as limited resources, availability of funding and preference of communities to live close to their original lands. Improving the resilience of infrastructure by designing against the expected tsunami hazard and multi-hazards, regular verification of the early warning systems and evacuation procedures are emphasized to mitigate the impacts from future tsunami.
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Resilience of masonry infilled reinforced concrete school buildings in low to moderate seismic regions: case study of Sri Lankan schools
(Springer Science and Business Media, 2025-12-08) Raheem, S; Thamboo, J; Mallikarachi, C; Wijesundara, K; Dias, P
The resilience of school buildings in high seismic regions is widely emphasised and evaluated. However such resilience in low-to-medium seismic regions are generally overlooked due to the lower probability of occurrence and low-to-medium intensities expected. Nonetheless, nominal seismic provisions should be provided for the life safety of pupils occupying these school buildings. Therefore, this study was focused on assessing the level of seismic resilience of school buildings in low-to-medium seismic regions, where the archetypal school buildings in Sri Lanka and the seismic demand in the country were taken as the case study. A framework to quantify resilience, incorporating social recovery aspects, was adopted to evaluate the seismic resilience. The resilience of the same archetypal school buildings subjected to different nominal retrofitting methods was also assessed to verify the improvement in resilience compared to un-retrofitted buildings. The epistemic and aleatory uncertainties were incorporated by using 25 different recorded seismic accelerograms and Monte-Carlo simulation of material properties (twenty sets of randomised values), respectively; with 500 combinations (aleatoric and epistemic) being analysed for each building type considered. Seismic resilience indices (RIs) obtained indicate that the school buildings with retrofitted configurations are certainly better than un-retrofitted ones, especially for higher hazard levels. Increases in the RIs are in the range of 36.6–91.2% for the highest hazard level. Sensitivity analyses were also carried out to ascertain parameter influence on RIs. The proposed nominal retrofitting solutions for these school building archetypes generate adequate resilience against the seismic hazards demarcated for the country.