Abstract:

On February 6, 2023, a Mw 7.8 earthquake shocked the Gaziantep province, southeastern Turkey, and the northern border of Syria. This event was followed nine hours later by a second Mw 7.5 shock located around 59 kilometers to the southwest. Tremors felt as far away as Israel or Lebanon. The death toll climbed to 50,000 casualties. This doublet was the strongest in Turkey in more than 80 years. Unlike the Western country, more used to living with tremors, the affected region had not undergone a big earthquake for more than 200 years and lacked preparedness in buildings and constructions. The resistant infrastructure in South Turkey and especially Syria is patchy. Damage explorations and technical analyses have identified diverse causes and modes of building collapses and ground effects, such as soil liquefaction.
The earthquake consequences entail significant pain, broken lives, technical problems, immense economic loss, and social impact. The earthquake is a natural phenomenon; however, the catastrophe is not. There is no possible prediction at short time, so what can be done to prevent the disaster? Damage prevention is possible!
This study aims at grasping knowledge from this ordeal to design a service-learning strategy with a twofold SDG-11-focused target: to identify the causes and modes of infrastructure failure and building collapses, and to raise conclusions on seismic retrofit measures of existing dwellings and good design practices for the new ones.
The procedure builds on the assessment of two concepts, the seismic hazard (long-time expected motion at a given site due to the contribution of the seismic source, the propagation path, and ground-site conditions) and the seismic risk, i.e., the likelihood of experiencing a specified level of seismic hazard in a given time exposure. The main challenge of the seismic hazard assessment lies in quantifying the factors that intervene in the ground motion at a given site Likewise, the proper seismic risk assessment may shed light on adequate urban emergency plans, as well as earthquake-resistant design of structures, to be less vulnerable ones.
Hence, the main objective of this service-learning approach is to gain insight into the causes and consequences to be learned and taught in our Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) faculties. The strategy involves applying an interdisciplinary approach and Artificial Intelligence (AI) features (SDG 17). The purpose is to benefit from the AI features to help academia to improve knowledge acquisition.
We propose a methodology based on Experiential Learning, Challenge-based Learning, and Competency-Based approaches to impart learning experiences that wake awareness of social inclusion competencies and help to improve learning outcomes.

Keywords:

AEC courses, AI-aided instruction, challenge-based learning, Turkey and Syria 2023 earthquake, service-learning.