ASSESSMENT OF EXPLOSION PROTECTION MEASURES IN COMMERCIAL COMPLEXES IN ABUJA, NIGERIA

Abstract

The rise and spread of terrorist activities around the world, with Nigeria featuring prominently among the countries with most astounding human casualties and building destructions, has become a worrisome trend now occupying defensive thinking, militarily. But lately, Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria has had a series of explosive attacks with the utilization of Improvised Explosive Devices in parked or penetrative suicidal vehicular operations with varying degrees of decimations, which calls for the occupation of our defensive thinking as well, architecturally. Commercial complexes happen to fit into the considerations necessitating the need for their protection to mitigate terrorist attacks and ensure building survivability and safety of occupants. This paper set out to assess the blast resistance measures (defensive levels) in commercial complexes in order to come up with protective architectural design methods for new buildings or retrofit methods for existing structures to make them blast resistant buildings. This study utilized primary and secondary data sources. The primary data sources incorporated the utilization of observation schedules in field work, which were analyzed utilizing the SPSS software and the results exported to Microsoft Excel to produce pie charts to determine percentages of the imputed data. The paper studied the generation and reflection of blast wave, which is the chief damage mechanism in an explosion, to understand its behavior. It also used studies of building forms in terms of geometric shapes of buildings and some elements of the building envelope, and use of materials to exploit their energy absorption/reflection capabilities. As part of sustainable design, the effectiveness of the use of plants to reduce blast load impact is presented. The key finding is that the commercial buildings in Abuja are not architecturally in conformity with explosion protection designs and therefore need to be retrofitted to make them blast resistant