A Technological Crisis...

With several weeks gone by after the earthquake, it is now time to plan for rehabilitation of the persons rendered homeless by the earthquake. However, there is a severe shortage of trained structural engineers in the region who can assess the damages and suggest measures for repair/seismic retrofit of the damaged buildings. In effect, the earthquake has also shown the urgent need to develop an earthquake engineering industry in India so that earthquake-related products and services can be made available on to the affected communities on professional basis.

Initiatives, both short term and long term, are required to build capacity in the technical community to tide over this earthquake disaster as well as to develop preparedness for upcoming earthquakes in the country.  In the short run, in the following steps are urgently required:

(a) Sensitise the civic administrators of the major towns/cities of the gravity of the situation and provide them with critical inputs to develop a robust rehabilitation program, which includes the damage assessment of the building stock, and their repair/retrofit/reconstruction.

(b) Training to engineers in Ahmedabad, Gandhidham, Jamnagar, Morbi, Surendranagar and Rajkot on how to assess damages sustained by the buildings in the affected area.
(c) Insights into the performance of structures to the architects/engineers in the affected area, and the steps required to take-up retrofit of the large stock of buildings distressed by the quake; and
(d) Train the builders to do the relatively new activity for them, namely repair/retrofit/reconstruction.

            
In the long run, the following bold steps are required:

(a) Develop legal and technical framework to ensure that all new constructions fulfill seismic requirements.

(b) Evolve an implementable seismic retrofit policy for handling a huge building stock in the country that may be seismically deficient.

(c) Include earthquake design and construction in the curriculum in the Indian technical universities/institutes, and

(d) Conduct vigorous and practical short-term courses for training practicing engineers and architects on seismic design of reinforced concrete buildings and bridges. 

 

Unfortunately, in a large country like India, too few individuals and institutions are engaged in earthquake engineering. A major focus has to be placed on institutional and manpower development in this critical area. The National Information Center of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE) and IIT Kanpur would like to contribute to the above cause, in all possible ways to meet the above long term and short term demands.

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Note: The pedestal alone is shattered,
the Father of the Nation is still standing.

 

 

This is a special presentation of

National Information Center of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE) at IIT Kanpur,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, USA,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India