DRR Study of Kuala Lumpur City

On April 11th 2012, an earthquake of Mw8.6 occurred at off coast of Sumatra Aceh Province. The tremor was felt over a wide area in South East Asia, including Malaysia and Singapore. Large cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Singapore have many high rise buildings, and the seismic safety of these buildings needs to be carefully monitored and studied. The study of dynamic properties of ground in these large cities are extremely important for examining the seismic safety of high rise buildings.

DRR (Disaster Risk Reduction) study group of UTAR Civil Engineering FYP is collecting information to study such dynamic response of buildings in Kuala Lumpur. For the first step of study, the group has visited the Meteorological Department of Malaysia (Jabatan Meteorologi Malaysia, http://www.met.gov.my/) at Petaling Jaya to learn about the seismic as well as meteorological hazard monitoring system. According to the Department, there are 14 seismic monitoring stations in Kuala Lumpur as shown below. The group will continue to gather information related to the seismic safety of Kuala Lumpur in order to promote the DRR against seismic hazards in Malaysia.