Investigators: Dr Frances Cooper (Earth Sciences), Dr Byron Adams (Earth Sciences), Dr Daniel Haines (History)
This project was funded by the Cabot Institute Innovation Fund to the value of £3000
Project descriptor:
Myanmar (Burma) is one of the poorest nations in Southeast Asia and is listed as a Least Developed Country by the UN. After 50 years of military rule and civil war, the country is reopening to the world, but it faces serious social and economic challenges. To add to its problems, Myanmar lies on the eastern edge of the Himalaya, a seismically active region, as highlighted recently by Mw 6.9 and 6.8 earthquakes in 2011 and 2016. However, due to its long closure to the outside world, the geology of Myanmar remains poorly understood and there is little understanding of its seismic hazard. It has been suggested that some faults in the country have the potential to produce large earthquakes of Mw > 8.5, which would have a significant impact on Myanmar’s environment and infrastructure, as well as its population’s access to food, water, energy, and healthcare. The aim of this scoping study is to make connections with an interdisciplinary team of researchers and stakeholders in Myanmar to explore ways to co-develop resilience and research capacity to cope with earthquakes and their cascading effects on the country. Critically, this project will build on an existing 1-year pump-priming Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Building Resilience project on seismic hazard in the nearby Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan (“BRACE”, www.bracebhutan.org). Our aim is to extrapolate the knowledge and expertise garnered from BRACE to Myanmar in order to seek future GCRF funding to building resilience to seismic hazards across the vulnerable eastern Himalayan region.