Earthquake safety of houses in India : Understanding the bottlenecks in implementation

Abstract

According to current seismic zone map around 60% of India’s land area is prone to moderate to severe earthquakes. And earthquake losses, in terms of life and property in last 2 decades have been high, with housing contributing to over 95% of life loss; this failure attributed to improper design and construction practices of housing.Thus, all the three factors influencing earthquake risk of houses in India are above danger levels in many districts of India – hazard, exposure and vulnerability. This paper classifies housing risk in the entire country into four groups; about 47% of population is living in the highest risk. Gigantic effort is required to mitigate the risk. The paper also suggests some steps to move forward to reduce earthquake risk to housing in India.