Natural hazards like earthquakes, cyclones and floods become natural disasters because unsafe building constructions continue in the country inspite of National Building Code and Indian Standards on Hazard Safety as these are neither mandatory nor are enforced strictly. Existing Town and Country Planning Acts, Master Plan and Area Development Rules and Building Regulations do not adequately incorporate safety requirements against natural hazards. Enforcement mechanism of the Codes and Standards is found very deficient. Roles and responsibilities of different stake holders namely, owner, builder, developer, architect, engineer and the personnel in the regulatory bodies/authorities lack clear definition, proficiency and accountability.

The meeting of the State Ministers in charge of Housing, Urban Development and Local Self Government identified the challenges before the country and also looked at possible alternatives that could lead to safe and un-interrupted lives for its people. Some of these are:

1. To ensure planning development and expansion of habitations for considerations of improving their safety against natural hazards.

2. To ensure that all new building constructions have mandatory provisions of safety elements against earthquakes, cyclones and floods.

3. To assess the hazard safety of existing buildings and to demonstrate and encourage owners for retrofitting of unsafe buildings, particularly those which are critical to the safety of large number of people.

1. To restructure State policy on disaster management including pre-disaster mitigation (prevention and preparedness) as against the existing policy of post-disaster relief and rehabilitation.

2. All States should formulate a State level Disaster Management Plan, keeping in view the nature of natural and man-made disasters likely in the State with appropriate response mechanism for action at various levels, starting from State level headquarters through the district headquarters, towns down to the local village units. Appropriate preparations keeping in view the State level disaster mitigation plan in respect of preparedness, prevention, capacity building, training, drills, the nature of equipments and machinery needed to be provided for has to be taken into account.

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Providing necessary special funding and evolving strong policy instruments for pre-disaster mitigation activities with adequate manpower and institutionalised mechanisms.

3. To organise awareness programmes on disaster reduction taking full advantage of print and electronic media for policy makers, legislators, decision makers, administrators and community professionals.

4. To examine the existing legislations (Town and Country Planning Act, Master Plan and Area Development Rules and Municipal Regulations) and to amend the same for providing disaster safety as mandatory requirements at all the four levels, Development/Special Area Authorities, Municipal Corporations, Municipalities and Panchayats.

5. To establish Natural Disaster Mitigation Commission/Council/ Committee equipped with scientific and technical manpower in every disaster prone State so as to advise the State Government in various aspects of disaster mitigation, prevention and preparedness and exercise such functions/powers which the State Government may decide.

6. To create appropriate enforcement mechanism in various local bodies from corporation to panchayat levels to ensure disaster safe construction of good quality.

7. To ensure proper performance of the existing buildings and housing stock to withstand the forces of natural hazards in future, it is necessary to create mechanism for carrying out safety audit and facilitate adequate financial support for retrofitting and strengthening wherever necessary.

8. To undertake micro-zonation surveys in fast expanding urban agglomerations falling in the disaster prone regions for preparing land use and development plans based on local soil effects and liquefaction potential. Based on the recent events priority may be given to the settlements where liquefaction of soil has been observed.

9. To improve and strengthen instrumentation network in the disaster prone States for monitoring and study of seismic occurrences, strong ground motions, cyclonic wind speeds, storm surge heights and flood flows.

10. To promote the study of natural disaster prevention, mitigation and preparedness and the national standards as special topics in architectural, engineering and town planning curricula as well as in various school education programmes so as to generate the necessary human resource and to create awareness amongst youth. This will ensure the requirement of capacity building at local and regional levels.

1. To ensure empowerment and accountability of the various actors involved in building construction, namely, the owner, the builder/developer/promoter, the architect, the structural engineer, supervisors, the local body personnel involved in approval of plans, inspection of constructions and issuing of building use permits.

2. To insist on the submission of design and drawings signed by all four stakeholders namely, the owner, builder of approved qualifications, qualified architect and structural engineer of specified qualifications before the permit to build is issued.

3. To insist on submission of a building schedule (check list) along with the application indicating the data and the standards that will be followed, to be cleared by one of the empaneled experts by the competent authority.

4. To insist on testing of materials by a qualified laboratory recognised by the local authority at various stages of the construction of the building.

5. Building use permit be issued only after complete structural design adopted, material test certificates and other safety certificates for fire and electrical installations etc. are submitted to the satisfaction of the local authority.

6. Appropriate use of friendly guidelines with Do’s and Don’ts for non-engineered disaster resistant construction features should be widely disseminated for the housing and building construction needs of the vast majority of general public.

7. For satisfactory enforcement at various levels, a number of well structured training programmes have to be organised on continuing basis for local professionals, tradesmen and artisans. The National Network of Building Centres should be utilised effectively for the substantial training and technology transfer and dissemination needs.

8. The responsibility of the various stake holders and the checking staff of the local body for the safety of the building should extend to certain number of years after the issue of the building use permit.

9. To formulate suitable legislative mechanisms for regulating the professional conduct (with penal provisions) and related responsibilities of architects, engineers (responsible for structural design and supervision) builders, developers and promoters.

10. In every major city/town and big villages with town Panchayats, which are prone to natural calamity of high severity, efforts should be made to construct and maintain major hospitals, school buildings and public amenity building for storage of essential life saving materials (food, medicine), equipments and machinery for removal of damaged material, using disaster resistant technologies of a higher order, so that these buildings not only serve as good examples of disaster resistant technology but also could be utilised as relief shelters providing the necessary emergency support facilities.

11. In addition to the techno-legal regime, a techno-financing regime should also be brought in to ensure that all public funded housing and buildings and construction, be it for health, education, industry, community amenities etc. be only built with disaster resistant construction features. Further, public financing institutions for housing and infrastructure development be advised to extend financial assistance to projects from States only when disaster resistant construction features are introduced in the proposed housing and building construction programmes. The same strategy will be adopted by public financing institutions for its investments for housing and building programme of the private, corporate, cooperative and individual sector.