COMPREHENSIVE BLUE PRINT FOR ACTION FOR HABITAT SAFETY AGAINST DISASTERS DRAWN  

  National Seminar on Habitat Safety Against
Earthquakes and Cyclones

2nd-3rd May 2001, Vigyan Bhawan
New Delhi, India  

Organisers HUDCO - BMTPC - IBC- Ministry of UD&PA  

The Seminar was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Minister of Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation on 2^nd May, 2001. The two days seminar organized by the Ministry of Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation with the Housing & Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC) and Indian Buildings Congress (IBC), was attended by 300 delegates. Besides a large number of practicing professionals participants included representatives, scientists, technologists, professors, senior officials from:

Nineteen Technical Papers were presented by the eminent experts under the following four Technical Sessions:

• Technical Session I: Assessment of Seismic Risks in Urban Areas

• Technical Session II: Damage and Risk Assessment

• Technical Session III: Mitigation and Management of Earthquakes

• Technical Session IV: Mitigation and Management Against Earthquakes/Cyclones

The Seminar identified the following issues that need to be addressed by the Government in order to reduce vulnerability and risk and improve safety of Urban and Rural Habitats. Hon’ble Minister of Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation Shri Jagmohan has also highlighted the following thrust areas during his inaugural address for evolving concrete plan of action:

• To inculcate a culture of safety and preparedness to cope with disasters as against the existing practice to respond with post-disaster initiatives only;  
  
  

• To ensure safety against natural hazards adequate attention needs to be given in planning, development and expansion of habitations;  
  
  

• All new building constructions should have mandatory provisions disaster resistant features for the safety against earthquakes and cyclones;  
  
  

• To assess the hazard safety of existing buildings and to demonstrate and encourage owners for retrofitting/strengthening methods of unsafe buildings, particularly those where safety of large number of people is involved;  
  
  

• To ensure that only qualified, licensed and/or accredited professionals (architects, engineers, contractors/builders/ developers) are engaged for planning, designing and constructing buildings and infrastructure through improved regulatory mechanisms and also to provide legally begged deterrents for unauthorized constructions in all urban sectors.  
  
  

• To ensure the highest level of professional participation with technologists, scientists, engineers, architects, geologists, seismologists, on all facets of human settlement development and creation of safe habitats against all natural and man-made disasters such as earthquake, cyclones, floods, landslides, fire, etc.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Techno-Legal Aspects

1. Realizing the weakness in the existing legal framework for seismic and cyclone safety, it is strongly recommended that the legislative framework involving Town and Country Planning Acts, Area Development Control Rules and Building Regulations should be appropriately modified to ensure safety from hazards in all future planning of habitations, expansion of existing habitations and new construction of various types of buildings in all disaster prone areas incorporating the disaster resistant features of National Building Code and earthquake and cyclone resistant codes of Bureau of Indian Standards.  
   
   

2. Strengthening regulatory mechanisms will be essential to ensure compliance of the various components of techno-legal aspects which may require training and retraining of the personnel in local bodies or strengthening the manpower. 

    

3. The seminar strongly recommended the need for association of right levels of professionals (architects, engineers and structural engineers) in architectural/structural designs/supervision through regulatory framework to be put in place at the earliest with uniform short-term and long-term plan of action all over the country. 
   
   

4. To put in to place comprehensive legislation for registration and regulation of builders, promoters, and real estate developers for creation of healthy and safe habitat.  
   
   

5. Bureau of Indian Standards be directed to put all the codes/standards/guidelines relating to safety against natural hazards and NBC to be put on internet for easy access to all stakeholders of building and housing construction sector.

   Techno-Financial Aspects  
   
   

6. It is strongly recommended that the disaster safety considerations should be included as essential components in all projects supported by various financing organisations in the same way as the projects are now required to have environmental clearance.  This should specifically be applied in all cyclone prone coastal areas of the country and earthquake disaster prone areas classified under seismic Zone V, IV and III.  
   
   

7. It is strongly recommended that the disaster safety considerations should be included as essential components in all projects supported by various financing institutions.  This should specifically be applied in all cyclone prone coastal areas of the country and earthquake disaster prone areas classified under seismic Zone V, IV and III.

   Disaster Safety in Urban Areas  
   
   

8. Deeply concerned with very high stakes involving safety of buildings and infrastructure in the densely populated cities and risk of large scale damage of buildings and loss of lives, the Ministry of Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation, as a follow-up of the Vulnerability Atlas of India, should undertake seismic microzonation of atleast 60 to100 big cities in plain and hilly regions to be identified in consultation with the experts from Department of Science & Technology, Geological Survey of India, and eminent urban planners. The Ministry of UD&PA should take up this nodal responsibility and coordinate required activities with the concerned Ministries/Departments and scientific organizations at the Central and State levels so that state-of-art methods/technologies are used for this exercise.

   The following actions would be required to take this programme in a Mission Mode in a period of one to three years:

   a.   Seismic Microzonation of cities lying in Zones V, IV and III so that site dependent hazard risk maps on appropriate scales become available to planners, architects, structural designers at the earliest.

   b.   Study of the existing building typologies with period of their construction to determine vulnerability under various seismic intensities and peak ground accelerations required for risk analysis in terms of collapse/damage and loss of life under a given scenario earthquake.

   c.   For cities in cyclone prone regions, study of building typologies, their vulnerability and risk analysis should be undertaken from the wind hazard and storm surge view points.

   d.   In view of the concern of large sections of population for safety of their presently occupied buildings in many urban areas, the municipal authorities may be directed by various State Governments to urgently start the process of assessing the safety of the existing buildings against future hazards.

   e.   Seismic micro-zonation does need especial attention, particularly on hitherto neglected aspects of liquefaction hazard mapping. Introduction of modern Penetrometers, Pressure meters, Ground penetration radar and such other devices will be essential for quality assurance, speedy implementation as also for augmentation of national capacity.  
   

9. Planning Commission may be urged to allocate necessary funds to the tune of Rs.100 crores to the Ministry of Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation during the remaining period of 9^th Plan and 10^th Plan for taking up microzonation as recommended above in a Mission Mode manner.  

    

10. Technology and practical guideline on retrofitting of foundation and the ground beneath it in different geo-technical settings should be expeditiously developed and integrated with the technology and guidelines for retrofitting of super structure of buildings to aim at total safety of the retrofitted habitat.  
    
    

11. Instrumentation for early warning against cyclones needs upgradation and modernisation for all its phases namely pre-cyclone watch, cyclone alert, cyclone warning and post landfall outlook. The present initiative of the Department of Science & Technology on creating an appropriate network S-Band Radar should be converted into a time bound national programme with assured funding.  
    
    

12. Telemetric instrumentation, an early warning against earthquake - induced landslides, which have been a very serious cause of concern virtually with every earthquake in our entire Himalayan belt, deserve to be encouraged and modern early warning systems should be installed on all hot-spots especially in strategic locations.

    Hazard Safety in Rural Areas  

13. Realising the vast spread of the rural areas in the country, the seminar recommends that urgent action be taken to ensure that all new constructions under various sectors like education, health, community development, banking etc. must incorporate earthquake/cyclone safety measures, so that these buildings should remain standing and functional during future earthquakes/ cyclones and should serve as shelters also for the community.  It will be appropriate that every village should have atleast one or two buildings of this type.
    
    

14. Existing school, health and community buildings in the various villages should be assessed for safety against natural hazards and retrofitted as well as upgraded so that they could serve the community as shelters in the event of the hazard.  

     

15. The Rural Building Centres established and to be established should also be mandated that besides the existing functions of technology transfer, they should also introduce the disaster resistant construction technologies as well as the technologies of retrofitting of existing buildings against seismic/cyclone hazards.
    
    

16. It is further recommended that demonstration projects in high disaster prone areas may be undertaken to show safe building construction practices which could be used also for training of artisans and awareness creation in the communities.
    
    

17. In order to make the disaster safety aspects acceptable to the communities, community based approaches have to be used in all hazard safety actions in the rural areas.
    
    

18. Considering the large scale geo-climatologically variations in different parts of the country with hilly terrains, mid-lands and coastal areas, the seminar recommends the development and dissemination of Region Specific Guidelines and user friendly brochures on application of disaster resistant technologies applicable to each of the regions.

    Supporting Actions  

19. It is realised that achievement of the Action Plan outlined above will require a number of supporting activities by various organisations which will be called upon to perform their functions expeditiously and efficiently such as hazard monitoring organisations, R&D organisations, educational institutions, Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems, Bureau of Indian Standards and the like.  The following are specifically recommended:

    1. The syllabi and curricula of the architectural and engineering institutions as well as primary and secondary schools should be reviewed to include appropriate considerations for hazards and the safety aspects.  
       

    2. Awareness creation about the hazardous phenomena and the safety measures against the disastrous impacts is immediately to be undertaken by various concerned organizations like administrative academies, national Centre for Disaster Management, Disaster Management Institute of the States, Universities and teaching institutions under the guidance of Ministry of Agriculture, Dept. of Disaster Management.  In this effort development of suitable awareness materials and use of electronic and print media should play an active role.

     

20. These organisations may also need financial support to strengthen their activities and programmes. The seminar therefore recommends that such need based financial support be made available to them.
     

21. There is a need for launching a massive Community Awareness Programme for the benefit of General Public for larger understanding and appreciation for the creation of safe habitat and the positive role the general public can play. For this the audio-visual, print, electronic and other folk media be utilised.
     

22. Considering the present level of understanding and application of disaster resistant technologies by the professionals, there is a need for organising continuing Education Programme for practicing professionals in public and private sectors.
     

23. Keeping in view the emergent need for adopting a holistic approach for disaster management at the State level the seminar recommends that all the State Governments should formulate and implement State level Disaster Management Plans, for mitigation and reduction of vulnerability for natural calamities existing in each State..