Taipei City Government

1.The competent authority of the Geology Act is the Central Geological Survey (CGS), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA). If you need to understand whether your house is located within a soil liquefaction potential zone, please visit the website of CGS, MOEA for inquiries http://www.moeacgs.gov.tw/2016.htm.

2.As for the question on whether your residence is in danger of soil liquefaction during earthquake, according to the Building Technical Regulations and Seismic Design Specification announced and revised by the Construction and Planning Agency, Ministry of the Interior on May 1, 1997, the soil liquefaction potential has been included in the seismic design consideration. In addition, according to Section 2 “Foundation Survey” of Chapter 2 of the “Structure Part of Building Technical Regulations”, requirements have been specified for the foundation liquefaction potential analysis. The responsible agency for the building management of the city (Taipei City Construction Management Office) implements management according to relevant construction management laws in order to ensure the safety of buildings.

3.If a residence is located in a soil liquefaction potential zone, it does not mean that the residence is unsafe. The government encourages the general public to consign a professional civil engineer or structural engineer to conduct assessment on whether the building structure is subject to any disaster in case of the occurrence of an earthquake of the Richter scale of 5 or 6. For a building that is of old age and in the soil liquefaction potential zone, urban regeneration will be applied to such building in priority. For some areas that are in the soil liquefaction potential zone but the buildings are not of old age, then they are recommended to adopt the reinforcement method.

4.In addition, the Department expects to publish the soil liquefaction potential map of Taipei city in the webpage method once the map is completed in August this year, and the scale precision is able to reach 1/5000, a much higher resolution than the version previously published by the Central Geological Survey (CGS). The webpage content will include the information of soil liquefaction zone online inquiry, soil liquefaction mechanism explanation, soil liquefaction Q&A and soil liquefaction improvement strategy etc. It is expected to allow the general public to perform online inquiry and use as well as to facilitate the use for future urban planning and urban disaster control planning.