This study analyzes the exposure of energy and transport assets in Asia and the Pacific to climate change and earthquake hazards and highlights how multi-hazard assessment can help strengthen the resilience of crucial infrastructure. Geolocating and undertaking a multi-hazard assessment of more than 30,000 infrastructure assets, the study identifies significant …
IN 1996, Kerala, considered a seismically safe zone, witnessed a tremor of magnitude 2.8 (on the Richter scale). This is not 4D isolated case, for the state has lately been seeing an increase in the frequency of tremors in its central and southern parts. Studies by C P Rajendran and …
A CHUNK of the earth's crust off Canada's west coast is beginning to disappear, says a report by North American geologists. The fragment, known as the 'Explorer plate', is fusing with its neighbouring plates to form a new plate boundary and will cease to exist independently. This is the first …
In the southern African country of Lesotho, a series of earthquakes has occurred recently because of the filling of a reservoir. For more than a year, seven villages around the reservoir of Katse dam have been damaged due to tremors. In the village of Mapeleng, 11 houses were made uninhabitable …
Antarctica, which till 1960 was considered an aseismic area, now supports seven seismic observatories. India will also set up an observatory near its permanent station Maitri during its 16th expedition to the continent towards the end of this year. The aim of the broad-band digital seismic observatory is to monitor …
geologists , earth scientists and earthquake engineers from all over the country gathered at Shimla on October 14-15 for an interaction meet on natural hazards and their mitigation in Himachal Pradesh ( hp ). The meet was organised by the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehra Dun, and the hp …
Geologists at Stanford University in the US have predicted that the next earthquake that hits the San Francisco bay area could be more devastating than the one that occurred in 1868. Working on the rupture patterns of the Hayward fault
EARTHQUAKES are devastating, but studying them is very fascinating. Specialists say that a major earthquake is often preceded by small signal tremors that mostly go undetected. By taking adequate precautions, damages due to violent rolling and tumbling of the earth can be minimised, according to experts. That is where a …
Slow, creeping movements of the earth might actually precede earthquakes, according to Clifford H Thurber, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin, US. Monitoring these creep events in the San Andreasfaultin California for some time now, Thurber contends that these may prove useful in providing short-termwarning (of about four months) …
Massive earthquakes that shook the American midwest in the last century were attributed to movements in the New Madrid fault zone in southern Missouri. Reportedly, there are innumerable such weak zones which can cause earthquakes iQmidcontinental US, according to Stephen Marshak and Timothy Paulsen of the University of Illinois in …
PRECARIOUSLY perched rocks, a sight common to trekkers, can actually be a repository of clues pointing to the vulnerability of a particular region to earthquakes. Geologists who until recently seem to have overlooked the fact are now trying to get to the bottom of these perched rocks. These insecurely placed …
WILL it quake or will it not? That is the topic being hotly debated by seismologists and environmentalists regarding the Tehri dam project in Tehri Garhwal, Uttar Pradesh (up). The latest in the row is a startling finding by a group of scientists of the Roorkee University, up, who say …
The explosive growth in the use of cellular telephones is threatening the field of radio astronomy which investigates everything from the formation of galaxies to finding better ways of predicting earthquakes (Newsletter of the International Telecommunication Union, No 8). The warning came from the authors of the new Handbook on …
THE oceanic crust of the earth is in perpetual motion. The numerous plates forming the crust are either moving towards each other or away from each other. Where they diverge, the gap is filled up by freshly formed igneous rocks and where they converge, one plate moves under the other …
Japan is setting up a US $40 million laser-based monitoring station - Keystone - to help predict earthquakes. It will he set up around the Tokyo Bay area which lies at the junction of three giant tectonic plates on the earth's crust. Laser beams are bounced off from satellite reflectors …
AFTER 8 months had passed since the Great Hanshin Earthquake struck Kobe in western Japan, all damaged rail lines have been restored, most of the collapsed buildings have been removed, and reconstruction has begun. However, as of mid-August, some 7,600 residents who lost their homes, still continue to live in …
A FEW zealous social rehabilitators attempted to cheer up the lives of those women who lost their male offsprings in the Latur earthquake. In the past they had adopted family planning measures (tubectomy), and is no longer capable of bearing children. A male child would put the smiles back on …
The Kobo earthquake in January, which made humpty-dumpties of modern buildings in Japan, still could not shake the unconventional office and residential buildings designed by untutored architect Ando Tadao. He has now been presented with the Pritkzer Architecture Prize, Versailles.
AN OPEN invitation to devastation was given on April 26, when the United Kingdom- owned vessel, the Pacific Pintail, finally docked at Japan's Mutsu Ogawara port and its 14-tonne cargo of nuclear waste headed for a nuclear dump built over an earth fault. The ship's arrival was just as stormy …
THIS 2-part video documentary critically examines the donor and government reconstruction programme following the devastating earthquake of September 1993 in the Osmanabad and Latur districts in Maharashtra. In the 1st part, it examines the donor agency-sponsored housing relocation programme and reviews the validity of the decision to relocate the 52 …
