Educational initiatives in promoting confined masonry for improving earthquake resilience in India

India, with a population above 1.2 billion, has nearly 60% of its land area vulnerable to earthquake shaking ranging from moderate to very severe. The performance of buildings in past earthquakes in India has been poor, with collapses contributing to thousands of fatalities. By and large, building damage in past Indian earthquakes can be attributed to the two predominant typologies, namely reinforced concrete (RC) frames and loadbearing unreinforced masonry wall buildings. Though reinforced masonry with seismic bands is prescribed by Indian seismic codes, most masonry buildings in earthquake-prone areas in India do not have any form of reinforcement. Similarly, in spite of seismic code provisions for design and detailing of RC buildings, many such buildings are either inadequately designed or constructed (or both). Confined masonry (CM), as a structural typology, has been used for decades in earthquake prone regions of the world, where it has proved its efficacy to resist earthquake shaking and can be used in India, as an alternative to unreinforced masonry and RC frame typologies. The conversation on CM started in India in 2008, with an international meeting of global practitioners and academics, experienced in the use of CM in earthquake prone regions of the world. Subsequently, research studies on the performance of CM under seismic conditions have been carried out at several Indian universities, and a draft code for seismic design of CM buildings is currently under consideration by the Bureau of Indian Standards. Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) adopted CM technology for the construction of staff and student housing for its campus, this being the first instance of large-scale use of CM in the formal sector. A number of CM-related publications were initiated by the National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE), including the monograph on CM for engineers and architects published in 2007, and illustrated guidebooks on CM construction for masons and builders in the informal building sector. A few worskhops and international seminars for engineers and academics have been conducted during the past few years for the dissemination of CM to a wider nationwide audience. A few short courses and seminars on the subject were conducted for engineering participants at IITGN. Architectural design precedes structural decision making in building projects, and the structural typology is chosen fairly early in the design decision making process. Recognizing this, a significantly expanded third edition of the CM monograph was published in 2018, with an entire chapter on architectural design guidelines for CM buildings and design case studies. The book was classroom-tested in 2019 in a workshop for architectural students held in IIT Kanpur, and used by the participants to undertake the design of a school building with a design brief drawn from real life projects. This paper provides an overview of the CM initiative in India, with an emphasis on the different ongoing activities in capacity building and promoting CM.