PICE 2007 Mid-Year in Davao

I presented a paper entitled "Historical review of wind speed maps in the Philippines for various purposes: toward further development and use as wind hazard maps under the PICE-DMAPS program" (co-authors: B.M. Pacheco, N.E. Rosaria, L.E.O. Garciano). The idea was to present to a Philippine (civil engineering) audience a similar paper that I was to present at the later 4th CECAR (Civil Engineering Conference in the Asian Region) in Taiwan 10 days after to an Asia-Pacific audience (East Asia, Australia, USA).

There were no questions raised during the discussion portion after the presentation. However, a senior engineer from a Japanese firm's local office approached me and asked my thoughts on why their client is asking to use a higher design wind speed for their site than specified in the code (the NSCP). I remember that he said that the project was energy related (a power plant or petrochem/oil-related project). I said that for these types of structures, we usually use an importance factor greater than 1.0, and thus effectively, the design wind speed is larger than the basic wind speed.

Following are some details of the paper.

ABSTRACT: Different wind speed maps have been prepared for and used in the Philippines over the last 35 years, partly based on around 40 years of recorded data. These maps are mainly used for disaster reduction efforts (e.g. building/structural code use) or for wind power generation. The paper reviews the history of wind speed maps in the Philippines, and identifies future directions for developing, improving, and updating wind speed maps for the Philippines. In particular, the following are reviewed: the early work by Simiu (1973) which has been the partial basis of the wind zone map in the first four editions of the National Structural Codes up to 1992, the work by Rosaria (2001) which is the basis of the wind zone map in the 2001 National Structural Code of the Philippines (NSCP), an extreme wind hazard map by Rellin et al (2002) from a branch of the country’s meteorological agency (PAGASA), recent work by Garciano et al (2005), and from three other sources. The next version of Philippine wind speed maps could also be considered as ‘wind hazard maps’ that are in turn part of ‘typhoon hazard maps’ and other maps to be used in ‘typhoon engineering’ and other disaster reduction efforts in the country.

KEYWORDS: Philippines, NSCP, wind speed map, wind zone map, wind hazard map