Project News

Holding of Training of Trainers at Department of Culture

The Training of Trainers was held at the Department of Culture (DoC) under the Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs for three days from October 12th to 14th, inviting engineers from the districts. The purpose of the training is to learn seismic diagnosis methods / calculations for existing buildings and to realise the understanding of the development and results of ongoing research work on traditional Bhutanese houses. It is also aimed to train and recognise these participants a trainers for future dissemination and capacity programs at the local government level. Two engineers each (ten engineers in total) from the five districts of Thimphu, Haa, Punakha, Wangduephodrang and Paro participated. Japanese researchers participated remotely to explain the outline, purpose, and plan of the SATREPS project on the first day, and to give a presentation on the seismic diagnosis method on the second day. In the seismic diagnosis calculation, there was a training time, and the counterparts gave detailed guidance to help the participants understand. In addition, the seismic construction method learned this time will be applied at the Hands on training held in November. The state of the training was recorded in the video which will be used as teaching material for seismic diagnosis and dissemination purposes. Due to the influence of Corona, it is still difficult to gather and train engineers from all districts. The engineers learned this time will be the core, and we will continue to follow up on the project so that we and they can train engineers from other districts while using video teaching materials.

Lecture (left), calculation training (right)
Photo courtesy of Culture Bureau

Holding a debriefing session by JICA long-term trainee at
Department of Geology and Mines (DGM)

On October 29, 2021, the debriefing session by counterpart Ms. Nityam Nepal was held at Department of Geology and Mines (DGM) of the Ministry of Economic Affair. She participated in the JICA long-term training "Seismology Course" from October last year, and returned to Bhutan after receiving her Master's degree in Disaster Management from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. The title of the Master's thesis was "Geophysical Prospecting using Microtremors to Estimate 1-D Shallow Shear Wave Velocity Profiles in Thimphu , Bhutan". During the training in Japan, she estimated 1-D shear wave velocity (Vs) profiles and predominant frequencies of the soil for 25 sites in North Thimphu. By conducting a similar study in South Ibaraki, Japan where subsurface conditions are known, she also verified the methods applied to the microtremor data of Thimphu. The study and knowledge she learned will be immediately used for microtremor observation at the pilot sites and will be useful for estimation of site predominant frequencies. As microtremor measurement progresses, micro-zonation will become more practical and sophisticated, and it is expected that hazard maps will become more detailed in the future.

Debriefing session (Photo provided by DGM)