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After the January 26, 2001 Gujarat Earthquake, GeoHazards International
(GHI) was concerned about the risk of school buildings in the
largest Gujarat cities and asked the Volunteers for India Development
and Empowerment (VIDE) and NGOs Kobe to help fund a study that
would identify earthquake-unsafe school buildings in Ahmedabad,
Baroda and Surat. VIDE and NGOs Kobe agreed to help. GHI worked
with its Indian partner organization, SEEDS, to evaluate 153 schools:
42 in Ahmedabad, 58 in Baroda, and 53 in Surat. The schools included
different structural types, served students from a variety of
educational and economic levels, and were widely dispersed within
each city.
GHI found that the earthquake risk of the schools
in all three cities was and is significant, and recommended that the
authorities responsible for these schools take steps to reduce
the risk. GHI further recommended that these authorities initiate
comprehensive school earthquake risk mitigation programs. GHI
and SEEDS met with officials in these three cities to
discuss these findings and follow-up actions.
Gujarat State is a highly earthquake-prone region in western
India. Past earthquakes have devastated almost all parts of
the state. There have been thirty-three significant earthquakes
that struck the region since 893-894 A.D.
The figure below shows the location of Ahmedabad, Baroda and Surat, and the location
of selected historic earthquake epicenters, their date of occurrence
and number of fatalities. Figure 2 in the full downloaded report (to the right) depicts the Seismic Zoning
Map of India. The cities in this report lie in Zone 3 where,
according to current Indian standards (IS: 1893-2002), peak
ground accelerations of 0.16g and seismic intensities of VII
MMI can reasonably be expected to occur once during the design
life of a structure. The seismic zoning map is based on the
intensity from likely earthquakes, and does not follow
the current worldwide fashion of specifying zones in terms of ground
acceleration (a measure of earthquake shaking intensity) with
a certain probability of being exceeded in a given number of
years. |
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