IIT Guwahati organizes two-day symposium on Socio-Technological Aspects of Seismic Disaster and Mitigation

GUWAHATI: Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati organized a two-day symposium on Socio-Technological Aspects of Seismic Disaster and Mitigation (STASDM) on account of celebrating 60 glorious years of the Indian Society of Earthquake Technology (ISET) on 23rd and 24th June 2022.

The event was jointly organized by Centre for Disaster Management and Research (CDMR), IIT Guwahati, North Eastern Space Application Centre (NESAC), Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA), Department of Earthquake Engineering, IIT Roorkee and ISET. Students and faculty from different parts of the North East and other parts of the country participated and presented their research findings.

Prof. T.G. Sitharam, Director, IIT Guwahati, and President of ISET, is the Patron of the symposium.

The symposium included plenary talks, followed by invited talks in the domain of Seismic Disaster and Mitigation by various stalwarts across the country. Talks will be delivered both in online and offline mode.

Addressing the inaugural session, Prof. T. G. Sitharam, Director, IIT Guwahati, said, “There is a high need to learn particularly about vibration isolation techniques which were used in ancient structures. Further, regional seismic hazard should be given due importance in current scenario.”

Assam has been severely affected by floods at present and is prone to earthquakes. There were panel discussions in which experts from institutes such as ASDMA and NESAC as well as various industries participated as discussants to discuss how to deal with seismic disaster and mitigation and further direction in policy making.

Some of the key speakers who participated in this event include:

Ø Prof T G Sitharam (Director, IIT Guwahati)

Ø Prof Rajib Shaw (Kieo University, Japan)

Ø Prof Deepankar Choudhury (IIT Bombay)

Ø Prof M L Sharma (IIT Roorkee)

Ø Prof Subhadeep Banerjee (IIT Madras)

Ø Prof Murali Krishna (IIT Tirupati)

Various important themes such as Seismic hazard, Soil structure interaction, Seismic analysis of structures, Paleoseismology, Society, Gender and Earthquakes among others were the prime focus of the symposium.

The conference emphasized on the role of learnings from historic earthquakes, confined masonry, role of local soil in amplifying ground shaking, inclusion of earthquake loading on structural and foundation design towards minimizing induced damages during due earthquake.

Further, the need of research, industry and policy makers to jointly work towards disaster mitigations were also deliberated during the system.