Bangladesh is situated in one of the most tectonically active regions of the world where three tectonic plates, namely: the Indian plate, the Eurasian plate and the Burmese plate, met. Over the last two hundred and fifty years, Bangladesh has experienced eight major earthquakes of a magnitude over 7.0 on the Richter scale. Due to its proximity to the plate boundaries, active faults and impact of past earthquakes in and around Bangladesh, the probability of occurrence of strong earthquakes is considered high. 
The risks of loss of life and damage to properties by an earthquake are almost entirely attributed to man­made structures. The process of rapid urbanization and expansion of several cities, especially Dhaka, Chattogram and Sylhet, during the last 30 years, with most of the buildings being poorly designed and constructed, has been a big concern. 
The first edition of the Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) was published in 1993 and was enacted in 2006. PWD (Public Works Department) has been following the Code of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) to design reinforced concrete buildings. But its strict adherence to the latest codes, especially the seismic design provisions, have come into effect very recently. As a result, many existing buildings do not meet the seismic requirements of the current BNBC 2020. This necessitates retrofitting of the vulnerable buildings. 
PWD has been facing difficulties in taking up projects to retrofit existing vulnerable public buildings due to a lack of technical know-how. To overcome the deficiencies, PWD had taken up two projects with technical cooperation from JICA titled, 1. "Project for Capacity Development on Natural Disaster Resistant Techniques of Construction and Retrofitting for Public Buildings in Bangladesh (CNCRP, 2013-2017)", and 2. "Project on Promoting Building Safety for Disaster Risk Reduction (BSPP, 2017-2021)". This has significantly enhanced the capacity of the engineers of PWD for seismic assessment and retrofitting of existing vulnerable buildings.