Making homes quake-proof

Fifty-six per cent of India’s landmass is at the risk of moderate to severe earthquakes and 82 per cent of the country’s population occupies this land. Falling under this category is you, your family, your friends and pretty much everyone you know. However, you needn’t fret if you are as prepared as Professor Pradeep Kumar Ramancharla urges everyone to be. Head of the Earthquake Engineering Research Centre at IIIT-Hyderabad, Prof. Pradeep and his team of research scholars have developed a technology, or graph, that can assess the damage to buildings before an earthquake sets it.

Prof. Pradeep, who spent six years developing the technology called ‘Tool for Comprehensive Seismic Risk Assessment of Buildings’, explains why his focus is on buildings.:“My area of interest is earthquake engineering. I am also an expert committee member of National Disaster Management Authority on earthquakes and tsunamis and a member of Earthquake Committee of Bureau of Indian Standards.

Due to my involvement in these departments, I have been to the earthquake sites in Bhuj, Kashmir, Sikkim and various tsunami-hit areas and have seen the sufferings of people in these regions. I was moved to do something for them. The question I asked was: ‘How can we let people know in advance about their hazardous living conditions and how can they make the buildings that they live in safe? The answer was — ‘Make the buildings much safer’.”

Prof. Pradeep’s team then carried out an extensive research on the buildings in the country. Pilot projects were carried out in 2009 (Gujarat), 2011 (Maharashtra), 2013 (Himachal Pradesh) and 2014 (when the final product was tested in Chandigarh). “The technology is like a census, it’s a questionnaire and with the help of an engineer, you need to feed the data about your building — number of floors, columns, locations, material used for construction etc. Based on this information, you will get a number ranging from 45 to 180. The higher the number, the safer your building is,” says Prof. Pradeep, who will be launching the technology web portal on October 11 in the city.

“Hyderabad is safer when compared to other earthquake-prone states. But people occupying high-rise or open ground-storey buildings must be extra careful,” he says. “After the launch, we will begin talks with the government, on how to integrate this technology to provide compensation if a building is vulnerable. It’s not a foolproof system, you would still need to consult an engineer, but this technology is more on the lines of ‘prevention is better than cure’,” he adds.