One of the main goals of UN-Habitat is to assist the Government of I.R. of Iran in mitigating the seismic and disaster risks associated with the public and important buildings in the country and to further strengthen their capacity for pro-active measures in order to mitigate the damaging and devastating effects of future earthquakes on these properties and displays.

After the 2017 strong earthquake in Kermanshah Province, west of Iran, several hospitals and healthcare centers suffered severe damage. Based on the raised demand in the country, UN-Habitat submitted a proposal for the assessment and retrofit of existing health facilities to the Ministry of Health and Medical Education. This ended with the approval of the project “Inventory, Earthquake and Multi-Hazard Performance Evaluation of existing Health Facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran” referred to as BEHTAB (phase I), which was performed from 2018 to 2019 by the UN-Habitat office in I.R. Iran, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) and financial support from the Government of Japan.

In continuation of the first phase, the project “Emergency Support to Safer Hospitals and Settlements”, called “BEHTAB Phase-II” is a project on the evaluation, design, and retrofitting implementation of hospitals and health facilities in I.R. Iran, which is implemented by UN-Habitat, Tehran Office in cooperation with “Executive Organization for Public and Government Buildings and Infrastructure (EOPGBI)” and funded by the generous financial support the Government of Japan.

The BEHTAB phase-II project concentrated on improving capacity in the country on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) of health facilities through development of a pilot project on risk management of hospitals against natural disasters, focusing on earthquakes. Considering the performance of the non-structural components as a major critical issue on interrupting the function of the facilities during earthquakes, the subject was focused specifically. Different elements required for an integrated earthquake DRRM in Hospitals were covered within various project activities. Read more about the DRRM concept of the BEHTAB Phase-II Project, here.

BEHTAB Phase-II is composed of 3 main components as below:

• Component 1: Multi-hazard Assessment, Vulnerability Analysis, and preparing the retrofit design for existing healthcare facilities
• Component 2: Demonstrating non-structural retrofitting construction for selected vulnerable hospitals and healthcare centers as role models
• Component 3: Capacity development of the Government of I.R. Iran and related stakeholders through training courses, holding conferences, development of guidelines and software

The BEHTAB phase II project, considering the scope and diversity of the goals and outputs and the specialized activities needed to improve the resilience of hospitals, required creation of a comprehensive and appropriate implementation protocol. In this regard, different ways of cooperation with consultants, either directly by UN-Habitat or through Agreement of Cooperation (AoC) with Implementing Partners in the country, were established for various Components foreseen in the project.More