Engineers’ Angle | Getting Jamaica earthquake ready

Peter Jarvis

Contributor

In the earlier part of the 20th century the engineering considerations related to earthquakes evolved into being a requirement for the design of structures.

In our time, say since the mid 1950s, the criteria for loads and design evolved in many ways:

The earliest and most basic approach was to apply a static lateral force, equivalent to a percentage of the mass of the structure, based on approximate seismic zoning.