Anna University Vice-Chancellor P. Mannar Jawahar handing over a guide on seismic risk evaluation of buildings to Chief Engineer (General) of PWD S. Jayaraman at a function in Chennai on Thursday.

CHENNAI: The Public Works Department (PWD) is all set to make a seismic risk evaluation of the government buildings under its control in Chennai.

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Delivering a guest lecture at the

Ajai Sreevatsan and Aloysius Xavier Lopez

CHENNAI: Construction of 19,765 disaster-resistant houses in the coastal districts of the State has begun, Finance Minister K. Anbazhagan said here on Tuesday. Work on 1,976 houses had been completed.

Ahmedabad/Bhuj: The new jail in this town on the Indo-Pak border is finally ready. The 100-year-old Bhuj jail had collapsed in the January 26 quake of 2001 and more than 150 inmates, including six Pakistanis, booked for smuggling RDX into Gujarat, had escaped.

RAMANATHAPURAM: Monsingh D. Devadas, Dean, School of Architecture, Anna University, Chennai, has stressed the importance of constructing buildings particularly multi-storey only by following seismic safety standards in order to minimise the damage from the earthquake related disasters.

Famous geologist Dr. M K Khanna said here that unsafe buildings in our country are more responsible for death than earthquake in our country. We cannot stop the earthquakes in future. But we can definitely limit the death and damage to buildings through earthquake resistant construction. Dr Khanna was addressing a workshop on disaster management organised here by the Science Centre, Gwalior in coordination with National Science and Technological Council, New Delhi.

Students of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, have designed a brand new rehabilitation shelter that can be constructed quickly in the event of an earthquake or any such disaster. Five third-year students of the Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering Departments have built the structure primarily for earthquake-hit people. It can withstand wind, seismic and thermal blows for over four weeks. The shelter was one of the many innovative projects that were on display at IIT Delhi's annual Open House on Saturday.

Often termed as poor man's timber, bamboo, with its various new applications can well be an alternative housing solution for the earthquake prone areas due to its high tensile strength structurally. Exploring the use of bamboo as an alternative to the rapidly depleting wood resources in housing and other industrial activities, a three-day residential training programme on modern bamboo structures and housing will be organised at Kohra, Kaziranga National Park from March 6 to 8, 2008. The programme is jointly organised by Cane and Bamboo Technology Centre and Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. The programme aims to provide technical know-how on the use of the bamboo technology as a whole, particularly in the housing sector and in varied structural applications. "For the first time a workshop of such magnitude on bamboo technology is being organised in Kaziranga dealing with the new applications of bamboo other than the traditional use,' said the sources in the CBTC. The programme, targeting the civil engineers, architects, consultants, builders, developers contractors, entrepreneurs and NGOs among others, would have partici-pants mainly from North East as well as neighbouring Nepal. The training programme would elaborately deal with the topics including bamboo of NE India, availability and suitability for building construction, the structure of bamboo and its mechanical and engineering properties, durability and preservation of bamboo, code an standards bamboo in building construction, bamboo structures for eco-tourism and earthquake prone areas, introduction to bamboo applications for industrial and housing materials, engineered bamboo products and its usefulness in housing industry, bamboo construction for rural housing and bamboo policies and impact on national and regional developmental issues. In order to tap the abundant bamboo resources of the North East; the North Eastern Council (NEC) launched the North East Regional Bamboo Mission aimed at sustainable development of the bamboo sector. The CBTC, established in 2000 is a registered body under the auspices of the NEC, which is carrying out the mandate of the North East Bamboo Mission since October 2004. The CBTC has now undertaken a wide range of bamboo constructions in and around the NE region both in public and private sectors. On the other hand, the BMTPC is actively involved in developing bamboo-based technologies and promoting those technologies in the bamboo growing areas including the North East.