PHILIPPINES – Metro Manila

The Philippines are regularly subject to various dangerous natural events that often cause loss of life and costly damage to the country’s infrastructure. The country is often exposed to strong earthquakes; for example one of the most recent destructive earthquakes, the M 7.2 Bohol and Cebu earthquake (2013), damaged over 73,000 structures, of which over 14,500, including several schools, were completely destroyed. Similarly, there are several areas characterized by strong winds and heavy rains along the northeastern coast of the Philippine Sea. In 1991, a sudden flood killed about 8000 people and destroyed many structures on the Leyte island. In addition, Typhoon Haiyan (2013), known as Yolanda in the Philippines, was one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded, which devastated different parts of the country, killing at least 6,300 people. The recent history of damage and destruction indicates the substantial vulnerability of the country’s infrastructure, in particular schools, to various forms of natural hazards.
Therefore, the Department of Education (DepEd) asked the World Bank for technical support to implement a strategy that can mitigate the risk of disasters in Metro Manila’s public school buildings.
The specific objectives of the assignment are:

a) conduct a seismic risk assessment of a series of high-risk school buildings in Metro Manila and the DepEd Central Office;
b) to train DepEd engineers and DRRMS staff on the field regarding the risk assessment of school buildings;
c) based on the seismic vulnerability that emerged from the analyzes, provide risk reduction options for the buildings analyzed (reconstruction, relocation, retrofit) and the corresponding cost estimates;
d) develop a “multi-risk” decision methodology that is replicable and provides an “algorithm” that can direct DepEd towards risk reduction options such as, for example, retrofit, in situ reconstruction or transfer and reconstruction.