Earthquake risk reduction in higher education centers with lowest cost

Over the last decades, a number of natural and man-made incidents have been occurred in higher education centers in the country, such as: fire in central library of Tehran University in 1384 and destruction of Azad and Payam-e Noor universities following the 1382 Bam earthquake, resulting in not only fatalities and damages to buildings, but also loss of valuable documents and unique books and resources. In addition, lack of awareness and knowledge about the mitigation and preparedness measures among students, academic and administrative staffhave caused more vulnerabilities at the time of an incident. Located in a seismic zone and due to the age, Shahid Beheshti University is vulnerable against various possible disasters such as earthquakes. Although most of universities around the World have prepared disaster plans, little consideration has been given to it in Iran. Such programs aim to establish management base according to their current administrative charts and also to strengthen buildings and open areas both structural and non-structural, focusing on following aspects: 1. Building seismic retrofitting 2. Demolishing current buildings and rebuilding new ones 3. Non-structural strengthening of buildings 4. Reviewing current administrative charts and allocating secondary responsibilities Although the first and second options are important in engineering area, they are less applicable because of lack of budgets in universities. Therefore, the rest of the options may be practiced in short term. The present paper aims to examine such issues in the Faculty of Architecture, Shahid Beheshti University. The research method is a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches based on a conceptual framework resulting from current disaster plans in other universities around the World. Paper concludes that if students, academic and administrative staff would be trained and participate in regular rehearsals during the semesters, they may be prepared for any sudden events. Moreover, by strengthening nonstructural elements, the possibilities of damages would be decreased. In addition, there is an urgent need to allocate software and hardware programming in order to mitigate the possible risks in future.