SAN ANTONIO – Buildings are safer and stronger thanks to research and upgrades nationwide says Adolfo Matamoros professor for UTSA’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He says it’s important that we all wait to find out what the investigation reveals about what lead to the Florida condo collapse before we make assumptions or changes.
“We need to find out as fast as we can what is the culprit for for this failure so we can make sure that the other people that might be at risk are not at risk,” he said. “Building laws and requirements have changed a lot over the decades he says. Supervision of construction also varies depending on the city, major cities have a lot of engineers available while smaller ones don’t.”
In general, federal, state and local laws oversee the construction of buildings but once the building passes inspections the safety over the lifespan of the building falls on the owner of the property he explains.
“Regardless of the what we find out to be the cause, maybe we need to begin to look at a closer time span and start looking at buildings like 20 years out,” he says about building inspections moving forward. “What’s the risk involved and whether we should be doing that in areas where there is a danger for corrosion damage. How often should we be looking at these buildings and what are the lenses through which we looked them at, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable?”
UTSA researchers are doing their part in making building safer and finding fast, effective ways to fix those that are damaged. Their large scale testing lab allows researchers to look at buildings up to 3 stories high and see how the might react to hurricanes, earthquakes and blasts, using different materials.
Award-winning research has also lead to the development of carbon fiber reinforced polymers, as a way to repair deficient bridges. TxDOT is already using this method to make fast, easy and cheaper repairs on bridges, other states are also using this new technology on roads and infrastructure.
“Codes are built so that an event like the one that happened in Florida has a very, very small probability of happening,” Matamoros said.