There is currently no place to archive sediment samples in Bangladesh. Encouraged by the success of the small seismology training facility previously established under a PEER pilot program grant, this project now proposes to renovate, furnish, and equip space donated by Dhaka University into a fully functioning center. The team anticipates jumpstarting the facility by storing samples from the more than 250 wells being drilled as part of the U.S. partner's NSF-funded project. The sample repository will be open to all Bangladeshi researchers to store samples and analyze results regarding a multitude of hazards, including earthquakes, sea level rise, land subsidence, arsenic contamination, and river avulsions. The project will also involve a workshop in Bangladesh on the tectonic and sedimentological background related to earthquake geology, including a field component that will teach site selection techniques. This will help establish a new line of research in Bangladesh to help trainees begin a coordinated countrywide effort to recover the geologic record of earthquakes in Bangladesh, and create a new generation of students able to apply earthquake geology techniques. Two other workshops will be also be organized, one focusing on seismic processing and interpretation  and the other on seismic hazard mapping and its role in disaster risk management and creation of seismic building codes. Through creation of the new center and the associated training activities, the project should help to bring up-to-date knowledge to geoscientists, engineers, and government administrators in Bangladesh in order to integrate these disparate groups and facilitate resilience against seismic hazard threats.

 

 

Activities on this project during the first quarter of 2013 were limited and confined to the organization of two training programs abroad. One is a sediment sample repository and data bank training at the Lamont Deep-Sea Sample Repository at Columbia University during the second half of April 2013. The participants, Masud Molla and Mohammad Saiful Islam, received two weeks of training, with the focus being on sample analysis using a portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer and a laser particle size analyzer. These are two pieces of equipment that will be purchased under the PEER Science grant. The other training course was held at Bremen University in Germany from April 8 thorugh 25. The two participants, Sanzida Murshed and Mostafizur Rahman, were trained in multichannel seismic data acquisition, processing and interpretation. It is expected that renovations of the room for the Sediment Sample Repository and Data Bank to be created in Dhaka will commence in May after the Columbia trainees return. A workshop involving the two Germany trainees is also planned.