To build a safe living environment, the MOI continuously strengthens the mechanism to ensure building safety. Through advanced relevant rules governing buildings, improvement of engineering quality of construction, and realization of handling of illegal buildings, concerns for public safety were addressed. Additionally, in consideration of frequent earthquakes in Taiwan, seismic evaluation of old buildings is relatively important. For buildings with safety concerns, for the assistance of urban regeneration, assistance to reconstruction for urban regeneration, seismic evaluation, dismantling and reconstruction are required. The reinforcement of living safety warranty is also one of the priorities works. Furthermore, through R&D of architectural technology, engineering quality of construction is basically improved to effectively protect public life and property safety.
Introduction to the 3rd party agency to strengthen the architectural screening system
In order to protect the public safety and properties, the MOI continuously promotes amendments of “the Building Act” for the planning of buildings reaching a certain scale, design screening and inspection of construction safety. The evaluation of completed construction structure shall be checked and approved by the third independent party before further construction to reinforce construction design and quality.
Dealing with illegal buildings to reduce concerns of public safety
The MOI continuously strengthens the supervision of local governments to request an active allocation for budgets to dismantle illegal buildings and implementation of punitive policies with particular focus on inspection, reporting and dismantling of illegal buildings that affect public safety. At the same time, local governments are called to promote the correct concepts of public safety and legal use of buildings to prevent the construction of illegal buildings.
Reinforcing seismic resistance of public buildings for better preparation for earthquakes
The MOI continuously conducts seismic evaluation and reinforcement for buildings of public offices and fire and police agencies, campus buildings of Junior High and Elementary Schools, teaching and hospital institutions, utility facilities that need to be maintained with functionalities as well as those for public use in public markets, public educational and cultural, health and social welfare agencies, and tourism transportation that applied for buildings constructed before December 31st, 2009 to reach the goal of seismic preparedness.
Promotion of safe home projects to ensure seismic safety of buildings
In order to improve seismic resistance of residential buildings, the MOI promotes safe home projects by providing subsidies at a total amount for evaluations of seismic resistance of buildings that obtained construction permits before December 31st, 2009. After initial evaluation, if any old apartment building is found to have safety concerns, a further evaluation can be applied with 45% subsidy of detail evaluation (not exceeding NTD300,000). If any residential unit needs to be reinforced or reconstructed after the initial detail evaluation, the applicant shall follow urban renewal procedure to maintain, dismantle or reconstruct them to safeguard the residential safety of people.
Advanced disaster and fire prevention and control to improve public safety
To safeguard building safety, public safety and properties for building a safe and comfortable living environment and to respond to increasingly complicated safety challenges derived from building spaces in Taiwan, especially for evacuation safety of people in shelter places for the disadvantaged, large scale or high-rise buildings. The MOI for a long time has actively been devoting to investment in relevant R&D of technology for applications of fire prevention rules, specification and manuals. Additionally, to respond to the global trend of functionalities of building design, functional design and smart disaster and fire prevention technologies have been Introduced to advance building and fire prevention equipment and to further tracing material uses and maintenance to ensure public safety of buildings and protect public residential safety.
Evaluation of seismic resistance of buildings to ensure the structural safety of buildings
Taiwan is situated in the Circum-Pacific Seismic Belt and is frequently hit by earthquakes. Buildings, thus, are exposed to threats of earthquakes. In the beginning of 2016, Southern Taiwan was hit by the 0206 Earthquake that crashed Wei Guan King Long Building in Tainan and injured more than 200 people. Seismic resistance ability of buildings became an even more urgent issue. The initial evaluation system for seismic resistance of steel and concrete structures developed by the Architecture and Building Research Institute, MOI helps users to quickly and effectively evaluate seismic resistance of existing building and for future reinforcement design for the benefit to safeguard structural safety of buildings.