Some Innovative Education and Outreach Projects in India for Earthquake Risk Reduction

Abstract

The Indian earthquake problem is well known. About 60% of India's land area is considered prone to shaking of Modified Mercalli intensity VII and above (IS:1893-2002). In fact, the entire Himalayan belt is considered prone to great earthquakes of magnitude exceeding 8.0, and in a span of 53 years, four such earthquakes occurred: 1897 Assam, 1905 Kangra, 1934 Bihar-Nepal, and 1950 Assam-Tibet (Table 1). As seen in Table 1, there have not been any M > 8.0 earthquakes in India since 1950. However, a very large number of deaths occurred in the M 6.4 Latur (1993) and the M 7.7 Bhuj (2001) earthquakes. Of these, the Latur earthquake occurred in an area considered aseismic and placed in the lowest seismic zone (zone I; prone to intensity of shaking V or less on the MM scale) at that time (IS:1893-1984). These examples clearly underline the huge earthquake risk that most parts of the country face. View this table: TABLE 1 Significant Past Earthquakes in India Earthquake engineering developments started rather early in India. For instance, development of the first seismic zone map and of earthquake-resistant features for masonry buildings took place in the 1930's, and formal teaching and research in earthquake engineering started in the late 1950's (Jain and Nigam, 2000; Jain, 2002). Yet not enough progress could be made toward earthquake risk reduction due to a variety of reasons, including those associated with a typical developing economy ( e.g., relatively poor implementation at all levels; priority to provide basic amenities such as food, shelter, and medical care to a huge population). Over the years, no serious efforts were made to involve professional engineers in the agenda of seismic safety. As a result, the professional engineers in the country started looking at earthquake engineering as a superspecialty to be tackled by academics and experts. Moreover, …