M. Shashidhar Reddy, vice chairman, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) chaired a day-long brainstorming session in New Delhi last week with technical experts on drafting of a seismic retrofitting policy for India. The meeting also focused on the current trend in construction of open ground storey RC buildings in India, which are unsafe during earthquakes.
Members of NDMA B. Bhattacharjee, Dr. Muzaffar Ahmad and secretary, NDMA, Noor Mahmad also participated in the meeting. This initiative is a follow up to the recent special meeting of NDMA chaired by the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, to discuss about India’s preparedness in the wake of recent triple disasters in Japan.
In the meeting, Reddy highlighted that there is almost no practice of seismic retrofitting in the country. He said that there are perhaps lakhs of 5-storey buildings in cities and towns in seismic zone IV and V. Seven out of 17 metros in the cities are in these zones may not have the requisite seismic resistance.
Collapse of many buildings including lifeline buildings such as hospitals during past earthquakes in moderately vulnerable seismic zone, though considered to be relatively safer, reveals the vulnerability of existing building stock of the country. Therefore, there is a need for a policy and guidelines for retrofitting in the country, he said. The day-long discussion by IIT’s technical experts for such a policy mainly focused on vision for such a policy, implementing strategy and guidelines. The technical experts decided to come out with the zero draft on the issue by 15th July 2011.
In the second half of the session, experts discussed about rolling out a special strategy for earthquake risk mitigation in open ground storey RC buildings being rampantly built in India, which are vulnerable during earthquakes. Reddy, while expressing his concern, informed the technical experts that a special class of multi-storied buildings has been constructed in recent times across the country, and still being constructed, which have special features of open ground storey for the purpose of parking and other conveniences of flat owners with narrow columns and prescriptive construction.
Construction of these buildings does not often comply with existing BIS codes for earthquake safety, incurring huge risk during earthquakes. The vice chairman also urged the technical experts to come out with simple technical solutions for remedial measures that should be propagated for addressing the vulnerability of such vulnerable building stock in the country.
During this day-long discussion, technical experts of IIT Madras, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Roorkee, Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, Structural Engineering Research Centre, Chennai, Building Material Technology Promotion Council, Central Public Works Department, hospital design expert of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and experts of leading builders, developers, NGOs participated.