Speaker
Description
The Plurinational State of Bolivia has been striving to establish a seismic building code for over 12 years. While some building guidelines on 'how to build' were previously developed, they did not comprehensively address critical aspects related to seismic hazard. Although Bolivia experiences moderate seismic activity, destructive earthquakes have occurred with recurrence intervals of approximately 30 to 50 years, the most recent being in 1998. The rapid urban expansion of cities such as La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz has intensified the demand from national and municipal authorities for a unified seismic building code. In response, the Observatorio San Calixto presented a probabilistic seismic hazard map for Bolivia, demonstrating that high-quality data from IMS stations enabled the calibration of magnitudes within the seismic catalog and provided essential raw data for developing seismic design spectra for new buildings. For the first time, in November 2023, the seismic building code was officially approved by the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Vivienda of the Bolivian government, marking a significant milestone in the country’s efforts to enhance earthquake resilience.
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