The purpose of the field guide for rapid building assessment is to establish quickly the usability of buildings and associated infrastructure where functions may be compromised by the event of the earthquake, which could affect losses of life and damage to residential or business consequences.

The scope of these guidelines covers the rapid assessment of buildings to be carried out during a state of emergency or in the event of an earthquake.

This field guide provides procedures and guidelines for safety evaluation of damaged buildings. These procedures and guidelines are written for volunteer structural engineers, as well as building inspectors and structural engineers from city municipality departments and building officials.

This document describes the basic concepts of the guidelines for Level (I) Rapid Evaluation Post Earthquake Damage Assessment and Level (II) Rapid Evaluation for common and complex buildings. This field guide is an easy-to-use field reference document.

The Federation of Myanmar Engineering Society and the Myanmar Earthquake Committee collaborated to produce this field guide, with funding from UN-Habitat. The field guide is intended to be taken into damaged areas and used by trained structural engineers.