The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Seismic safety in B.Arch curriculum under study

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 24, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Seismic safety in B.Arch curriculum under study

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, JAN. 23. The Council of Architecture (CoA) will consider applications seeking permission for increase in student intake from institutions offering undergraduate programmes in architecture. It also wants more postgraduate programmes to be introduced.

"The council will be willing to look into them," said Vijay Shrikrishna Sohoni, president, pointing out that its executive committee expressed a desire recently to increase the number of seats from 4,000 to 10,000 in two years.

Infrastructure available

Much of the infrastructure required for such an increase was available. "There is no point under-utilising the infrastructure, whose cost works out to about Rs. 2 crores for 40 students. The need is to recruit more teachers and make better use of the infrastructure," Mr. Sohoni, told The Hindu , on the sidelines of a workshop here today on `inclusion of seismic safety' aspects in the B.Arch curriculum.

On new courses, he said the council would like to see the number of postgraduate programmes increase to 50.

Inaugurating the workshop, one of six such proposed by the Union Home Ministry all over the country, Mr. Sohoni said there was a consensus on including seismic safety aspects in the curriculum. The exercise was aimed at soliciting views from the academic community on "how do we do it? It has to be intrinsic to the entire syllabus ... integrating the concept of seismic design to every structure," he said.

The MAA secretary, H.M. Shamsudeen, said though little could be done to prevent earthquakes, steps could be taken to minimise the loss. The immediate past president, U. Md. Khalilullah, said options, including restricting constructions near the seashore and building a protection wall against tsunamis, were not practical. The better option would be to devise solutions for houses near the waterfront, he said.

Critical role

The workshop convener, S. Kesavalu, said the role of architects in making structures less vulnerable to earthquakes was critical. However, seismic design was not taught in most of the institutions teaching architecture.

N. Rajeshwara Rao, Professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the Madras University's Department of Applied Geology, said earthquakes caused great damage to structures. Making a presentation on research conducted by a Ph.D student, he said the model helped in predicting with fair accuracy earthquakes, correlating the planetary positions and the geology of the area.

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