Bangladesh Considers Building World's 5th-largest Data Center In Earthquake Zone

An anonymous reader writes with news about a government plan to build a Tier IV data center in an earthquake prone district of Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Ministry of Information is considering the establishment of a Tier 4 data centre in Kaliakair, in the Gazipur region, an ambitious build which would constitute the fifth largest data centre in the world, if completed. And if it survives – the site planned for the project is prone to earthquakes. Earthquake activity in the environs is discouraging, with one nearby earthquake seven months ago in Ranir Bazar (3.8), and no less than ten within the same tectonic zone over the last three years, the largest of which measured 4.5 on the Richter scale.

Comments

Come on - a 4.5 is nothing

[Harlequin80]

The tabloid journalism is strong in this one. A 4.5 magnitude quake is utterly insignificant when it comes to structural design. If this project is as large as promised it will be designed by serious engineers to withstand significant quakes and not even notice something in the 4s.

From wikipedia

4.0–4.9 Light IV to VI
Noticeable shaking of indoor objects and rattling noises. Felt by most people in the affected area. Slightly felt outside. Generally causes none to minimal damage. Moderate to significant damage very unlikely. Some objects may fall off shelves or be knocked over.

Frequency of occurrance - 10,000 to 15,000 per year

Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing

[EvanED]

Let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Based on http://earthquaketrack.com/bd-... (linked from TFA), I count five quakes in the last 3 years that are moderately close. (I'm counting the red, blue, and pink markers to the left, and orange and brown a little to the east; the latter are a bit questionable.) All of them are in the 4s in magnitude.

As a rough estimation (admittedly one that will probably diverge exponentially in any error), if you increase the magnitude 1 level, you decrease the frequency by a factor of ten. So five 4s in 3 years means you'd expect one in the 5s every 6 years or so, and in the 6s every 60.

Now, a moderate 6 quake is at the point where you have to explicitly build to resist earthquakes. So from this (very, on a number of axes) rough guess, it seems like they definitely need to consider the possibility... but it's also not something that is likely to present a huge challenge or anything.

Re:As long as they don't...

[ls671]

No problems, they plan to construct it 500 yards downstream from the dam in order to avoid power loss during transmission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...