Photo : BSS

CHATTOGRAM, Dec 03, 2025 (BSS)- Experts in a seminar here yesterday apprehend disastrous impacts on country’s economy besides unpredictable human casualty without a timely, pragmatic and comprehensive preparedness plan to mitigate and recover from the future earthquake catastrophe.

Terming the recent frequent tremors as SOS signal of possible higher magnitude earthquake in the future, they opined that all industrial and economic Key Point Installations (KPIs) on both banks of Karnaphuli river including Chattogram Seaport, CEPZ, KEPZ, Ctg Airport, elevated expressway, submarine cable network, Karnaphuli tunnel, energy and fuel supply  facilities including Eastern Refinery, infrastructures attached to the Cox’s bazar sea beach zone and under-construction Matarbari Deep Sea Port are on great risks of a bigger scale earthquake. 

Institute of Engineers Bangladesh (IEB), Chattogram Centre and Chattogram Development Authority (CDA) jointly organized the seminar on “Earthquake Risks in Bangladesh: Impacts on National Economy” at IEB center with its chairman Eng Manzare Khorshed Alam in the chair. 

Speakers also suggested that the authority should set the earthquake mitigation and preparedness plan a national priority considering the geographical risk factors as well as routine test of all buildings and infrastructures which might lessen damages to a great extent.

Eminent seismologist and former VC of Chattogram University of Engineering and Technology (CUET) Prof. Dr. Md Jahangir Alam presented the keynote paper of the seminar.
 
CDA Chairman Eng Nourul Karim , Ex-CUET VC Prof. Mozammel Haque , Divisional President of Association of Engineers Bangladesh Eng Selim Md Jane Alam and IEB, Chattogram center Secretary Eng. Khan Md Aminur Rahman, among others, took part in the discussion.
 
Prof. Dr. Jahangir Alam in the keynote paper said nearly four lakh buildings in 41 wards under Chattogram City Corporation, almost all school buildings, public and private healthcare facilities are severely vulnerable.
 
“As the region experienced no significant seismic activity in the last 50 years, the unchecked development has resulted in little resilience to earthquake,” he said.
Identifying the buildings and infrastructures of high seismic vulnerability is critically important for reliable loss estimation caused by any earthquake, he said.

Prof. Dr. Jahangir said a large number of old buildings along with new buildings being constructed without following the Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC)-2020 in 1528 square kilometer areas of greater Dhaka City with the population of 16 million is under high risk of economic and human losses during a high magnitude tremor. The issue should be addressed urgently before time is running out. 

He said it was foremost imperative to take natural catastrophe resistant and resilient measures in the design and construction of Matarbari Deep Seaport, which can be treated as Bangladesh’s future “Mini Singapore” transshipment hub to protect the giant installation from any natural calamities like tremor, Tsunami and tidal surge.
  
Prof. Jahangir Alam said steps should be taken to translate the all volumes of BNBC-2020 from English to Bengali and dissemination of the guidelines hurriedly be distributed to all stakeholders and policy makers for its proper execution so that earthquake compliance guidelines to be supervised before and after approval of infrastructures.
  
“We have huge manpower in multi-sectoral engineering discipline who could contribute to the earthquake mitigation process and supervision if initiative is taken to utilize their talent with effective use of AI,” he said.
  
He laid emphasis on creating awareness among people rather than spreading panic and depicting frustrating picture and advocated for a multinational collaboration to mitigate and minimize earthquake related damages.