Thursday, April 17, 2008 Wind engineering demand in RP high
WIND engineering or typhoon engineering are in high demand in the country, according to a University of Philippines (UP) engineer.
Benito Pacheco told civil engineers at the 8th Region I/CAR West Regional Conference of the Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers Inc. (PICEI) that there is a demand for engineers who specialized in wind or typhoon engineering because of the impact of global warming on the speed and force of winds in hurricanes, cyclones, or typhoons.
Pacheco said this demand in wind engineering also has something to do with the search for alternative energy sources in the country and in the globe that were not dependent heavily on fossil fuels, like wind energy and steam.
He explained that typhoon engineering has much to do with Disaster Quick Response Program (DQRP) and Disaster Mitigation and Preparedness Strategies (DMPS).
When the 1990 earthquake hit the Philippines, the DQRP was created to respond to the effects of the earthquake on civil works.
Pacheco said the National Structural Code of the Philippines already stated the requirements for construction but the disaster instituted more measures for compliance.
After the earthquake, the DMPS was instituted in 2004 that meant to answer to the focus on pre-disaster phase of construction and on other natural disasters like the drought.
This, Pacheco said, was important because whenever something went wrong with a building, it was always the engineer that was held liable for the destruction.
Typhoon engineering has to do with structural engineering because the wind factors that affected the country have much to do with the type of buildings that were needed.
In addition, Pacheco said geotechnical data were important. There was also a need to include coastal information, or data on water. With the amount of rainfall in certain regions of the country, flood control engineering was also integrated in typhoon engineering.
With these included in typhoon engineering, the Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers came up with the DQRP and DMPS, he said.
Although he did not tell the institutions that allowed engineers to specialize in wind engineering, he said this has become an urgent need because of the lack of important data from the different agencies from whom information are retrieved.
He said there was a need to standardize the information in terms of the reference duration in years.
The necessary information required by civil engineers at this time need the collaboration with meteorologists to study wind speed. This study is required for wind engineering for energy using wind turbines.
He said the update of the wind speed maps of the Philippines would help the civil engineers come up with possible guidelines in standardizing these in terms of the length of time covered by the data.
"These data also tell us what we can learn from the wind and what we should do," Pacheco said.
He noted there were only five wind engineers in the country today and that they were already employed by power companies. (NB)
