Project News

Bhutan at a Glance: Animals

The national animal of Bhutan is the Bhutan takin, which has horns like a buffalo, a nose like a moose, and long hair like a goat. Because the Bhutan takins are an endangered species, there is a national park to preserve them, namely the Motithang Takin Preserve, one of the tourist spots in Thimphu city.

A takin grazing in the Motithang Takin Preserve

A Seminar on ICT for Earthquake Monitoring

From 12 September 2018 at the Department of Geology and Mines (DGM), a JICA expert in seismology from Kyoto University, Dr Shiro Ohmi, held a two-day seminar on the information and communication technology (ICT) for operating earthquake monitoring system and its network. Attendees from the DGM had opportunities not only to learn the basic theory of operating the software and networking, but also to have hands-on practice in accessing earthquake monitoring stations from their laptops. During the seminar, a real small earthquake occurred in Bhutan by chance; the DGM made an official report on the earthquake showing the calculated epicentre, supervised by Dr Ohmi.

Lecture by Dr Ohmi (right) and DGM attendees.

It's a real earthquake! A DGM member quickly calculates the epicentre with a computer program.

Academic Conferences and a New Publication

On 6 September 2018, seven members of the project delivered a series of oral presentations, "Study on earthquake resistance technology of composite masonry buildings in Bhutan", at a conference hosted by the Architectural Institute of Japan. One of the presentations, "Element tests on reduced-scale rammed earth walls", was delivered by a Bhutanese student, Ms Phuntsho Wangmo, who is studying for a doctorate at Nagoya City University (NCU).

From 11 September 2018, Dr Shrestha, an assistant professor at NCU, delivered an oral presentation at an international academic conference held in Cusco, Peru. His presentation on "Full-scale pull-down tests on a two-storied rammed earth building with possible strengthening interventions" was published as an article in a booklet by RILEM (Réunion Internationale des Laboratoires et Experts des Matériaux, systèmes de construction et ouvrages).

Article Title
Full-scale pull-down tests on a two-storied rammed earth building with possible strengthening interventions

Authors and Affiliations
Kshitij C. Shrestha (1), Takayoshi Aoki (1), Takaaki Konishi (2), Mitsuhiro Miyamoto (2), Jingyao Zhang (1), Noriyuki Takahashi (3), Phuntsho Wangmo (1), Takumi Aramaki (4), and Noboru Yuasa (4)
(1) Graduate School of Design and Architecture, Nagoya City University, Nagoya, Japan
(2) Department of Safety Systems Construction Engineering, Kagawa University, Takamatsu, Japan
(3) Graduate School of Engineering Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
(4) College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University, Narashino, Japan

Book Title
R. Aguilar et al. (Eds.): Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions, RILEM Bookseries 18, pp. 1557–1565, 2019

• DOI (External link)