IIT Kanpur and BMTPC New Delhi Announce

The Republic Day earthquake of 26 January 2001 in Gujarat has clearly demonstrated the earthquake vulnerability of our country. There is now a very considerable interest amongst the professionals associated with construction activities in any form, as well as the non-professionals regarding the earthquake safety issues. While the subject of earthquake engineering has its own sophistication and a lot of new research is being conducted in this very important subject, it is also important to widely disseminate the basic concepts of earthquake resistant constructions through simple language.

 With the above objective, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) and the Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC), New Delhi will shortly launch the IITK-BMTPC Series on Earthquake Tips” and we invite all interested publications to participate in this very unique project anywhere in the world. The details of the project are as follows: 

1.   Initially it is planned that IITK will develop twenty four (24) Earthquake Tips under sponsorship of BMTPC. The intent is to have widest possible dissemination of these tips.

2.   Each tip will consist of one or two A-4 size page of written material with graphics. It will be targeted at an average civil engineer engaged in design or construction and will be written in simple and illustrative manner. Efforts will be made to develop the material such that an interested and educated citizen who is not a civil engineer may also be able to gain some useful information from most of the tips.

3.   The tips will cover topics such as basic introduction to earthquakes and terminology such as magnitude and intensity, concepts of earthquake design, aspects of aseismic design and construction of buildings.

4.   One tip will be released to all interested journals / magazines / other publications every month for publication. No royalty etc will be charged from such journals / magazines. Such publications will publish the tips without any modifications or alterations of any kind. In case, a journal is published say four times a year, it may publish three tips in every issue.

5.    The tips may also be provided on the web sites of NICEE, IITK, and BMTPC and any other web site at the discretion of IITK and BMTPC. Upon publication, the tips will become free of copy right and anyone will be free to publish and disseminate these subject to credits being given to IITK and BMTPC.

6.   The first tip is expected to be released on March 1, 2002 to all the interested publications.

Publication interested in carrying these tips for the next twenty four months may contact:

Prof. Sudhir Kumar Jain

Department of Civil Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

Kanpur  208016

Phone: 0512-597867

Fax: 0512-597866

Email: skjain@iitk.ac.in