Earthquake Resistance Is a Priority for Data Centers
Press Bulletin / March 2023
The Kahramanmaraş earthquake last month affected many provinces and left a painful mark on our country's history that will never be forgotten. It showed us once again that, just like the homes people live in, critical structures that must be operational immediately after a disaster (such as hospitals, airports and fire stations) need to be able to continue providing their services.
Today, as industrial heritage and industrial culture continue to develop, the safety and robustness of industrial structures are fundamental criteria. Data centers, which we define as one of the ever-growing number of critical facilities among the industrial structures that keep life running, serve as the archives of the digital world. Built with substantial investments, data centers are indispensable for ensuring sustainability in many critical areas worldwide, such as technology, communications and finance.
With the servers, backup systems, network layers and air-conditioning systems they house, data centers are foremost among industrial structures with sensitive dynamics. Data centers, which must offer an extremely high level of security and robustness, differ from other buildings both because of the importance of the equipment they contain and because of the physical dynamics of the buildings themselves. Earthquake resistance is one of the areas that require special expertise in data centers, whose design principles and parameters differ significantly from those of residential buildings.
Mesut Küçük, Data Center Director at SERBAN, which builds the data centers of Turkey's leading GSM operators, said: "All buildings must be resistant to natural disasters, and above all to earthquakes, the most common natural disaster in our country. Continuity and robustness are essential in building construction. The earthquake performance of a building varies according to its intended use.
"To this end, each country has its own disaster regulations and defines building importance factors. Data centers are structures with a high importance factor. They must be earthquake-resistant because of the people who work in them, the importance of the data they store and the sensitivity of the equipment they house. For this reason, data centers must stand on a solid foundation and have the design and material quality to come through potential earthquakes undamaged," he said, underlining the importance of earthquake resistance in data centers.
Küçük also offered recommendations on data center construction: "The resilience of data centers to natural disasters is a priority issue that requires great care and expertise, starting with site selection as soon as the decision to build is made. Data centers differ from other structures of the same size, and their structural performance must be enhanced with seismic isolators and shear walls. In addition, the building height class is chosen more conservatively than would otherwise be required. Not only in earthquakes but in all natural disasters and emergencies, critical structures such as data centers should be designed to remain stable and continue operating; even in the worst case, they should undergo ductile rather than brittle failure and be able to return to service after brief repairs."
Sharing SERBAN's practices for ensuring data center resilience, Küçük said: "We follow a strategic approach in our data center projects and deliver high-quality work. We analyze requirements from the beginning to the end of each project and chart our roadmap so that we stay ahead of potential risks. Because durability is a priority in our data center projects, we select every colleague working in this field from among experienced specialists. The use of quality materials and advanced technology systems is where SERBAN makes a difference in all its work. We base our projects on safe design and produce architectural designs free of irregularities.
"In addition, we take care to keep the structural system as symmetrical as possible for building safety, and we take a detail-oriented approach. To increase durability in line with the specific sensitivities of data center projects, we use a high ratio of shear walls relative to the total floor area, employ seismic isolators, carry out FRP strengthening where necessary and maintain continuous, regular site supervision. Data center construction is a field in which SERBAN has extensive experience. We bring this experience to every completed and ongoing project under our contract, and we take great pride in the difference it makes."