Some recent capacity building activities in India towards seismic risk reduction

Large parts of India are prone to damaging earthquakes and a substantial percentage of Indian constructions, both in urban and in rural areas, leave much to be desired in terms of seismic safety. Until recent years, seismic codes in the country were not mandatory and most professionals considered earthquake engineering as a super-specialty. This article describes some of the capacity building activities in the country in last about two decades. These include development of better seismic codes, training of professional engineers, creation of National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering (NICEE), intervention in the academic world through the National Programme on Earthquake Engineering Education (NPEEE), etc. Some of these experiences may be valuable for capacity building in many other earthquake-prone developing countries.