Nigerian geodesists under the auspices of the Nigeria Association of Geodesy (NAG) have said that a lack of deformation surveys to monitor structures is the main reason for frequent building collapses in Lagos State and other major cities.
This was revealed in a communique issued by the association, which consist of scientists and researchers specialised in scientific areas of surveying from their annual conference with the theme: “Geodetic Solutions to Multi-Disciplinary Problems”, held at Federal School of Surveying, Oyo.
LagosPost recalls that a 21-story building collapsed on Gerard Road, Ikoyi, Lagos on November 1st leaving no fewer than 40 people dead as a result.
Also, another building collapsed in the Badagry area of Lagos State on November 17th.
NAG has however said that the absence of deformation surveys for monitoring of structures such as high-rise buildings, bridges, and dams is responsible for the frequent building collapse in Lagos and other cities.
In a statement through its president, Professor Timothy Oluwadare Idowu, the association insisted that the only way to reduce incessant building collapse is to ensure rapid implementation and compliance with the Federal Government’s policy on deformation monitoring of infrastructures.
Moreover, NAG suggested developing an acceptable format for generating and presenting deformation monitoring data, so as to prevent incessant building collapses across the country.
Lake Chad’s alarming retreat is a major problem with international boundaries that could result in conflict in the country, explained the association.
It observed that the “Absence of deformation surveys for monitoring of structures such as high-rise buildings, bridges and dams is responsible for the frequent collapses of such structures in the country.
“Inadequate monitoring and poor understanding of subterraneous activities particularly in areas of intensive mining results in the poor estimation of the environmental impacts of these activities.
“Lack of accurate geoid model for the country is a major problem in the development of a common and unified reference system for the country. Insufficiency of gravity data in the country is a setback for geoid determination and modelling.
“The alarming rate of retreating Lake Chad is a major international boundary issue which has consequential conflict potentials for major socio-economic and national security concerns”.
In addition, he stated that the Federal Government’s policy on deformation monitoring of infrastructures has to be quickly implemented and enforced in order to reduce the high incidence of building collapses in the country.
“Speedy implementation and compliance to the Federal Government’s policy on deformation monitoring of infrastructures. An acceptable format for the generation and presentation of deformation monitoring data should also be developed. An acceptable format for the generation and presentation of deformation monitoring data should also be developed.
“Geodetic solutions to the spatial dynamics of Lake Chad retreating shorelines should be adopted for sustainable planning and management of the socio-economic activities and the mitigation of environmental impacts of the shoreline retreat, particularly as it relates to the Nigeria border sectors where significant variations are noticeable.
“Geodesy should be considered to stand alone as a full departmental programme in an appropriate faculty/school within university and polytechnic systems to deeply enrich researches in geodesy options like space geodesy, marine geodesy and geophysical exploration amongst others”.
Alleluia is the Assistant Editor and Content Writer at LagosPost.ng. She is a prolific writer and editor, she has written features and news stories on Lifestyle, Sports, Business, Politics and B2B marketing. She is also an event coordinator, host and social media content creator.
