NIT student formulates guidelines for ‘rebuilding Kashmir’

A student of NIT has formulated guidelines for rebuilding building infrastructure which was severely hit by devastating floods last year.

The student Saqib Gulzar, a final year B.Tech student in the Department of Civil Engineering at NIT Srinagar has compiled a book “Preliminary Guidelines for repair, restoration, retrofitting and rebuilding of building structures in flood affected areas of Jammu & Kashmir”

The book has been compiled under the guidance of Prof. A.R.Dar, Head of the Institute’s Civil Engineering department. Gulzar said these guidelines are based on field survey of the flood affected areas, exhaustive literature survey, current available research and global documents written for the same purpose.

“These guidelines have been produced under the purview of helping out the people of Jammu and Kashmir to build a safer built environment against the natural disasters particularly floods and earthquakes. The devastating floods that hit the state in September 2014, caused colossal losses to the built infrastructure. We at NIT Srinagar thought of coming up with preliminary guidelines followed by comprehensive and exhaustive guidelines pertaining to the repair and restoration of flood damaged structures,” Gulzar said.

“After continuous deliberations, we decided to incorporate seismic retrofitting guidelines as well owing to the fact that parts of Jammu & Kashmir fall under the High-risk earthquake zone, thereby intending to make flood damaged structures earthquake resistant.” says Gulzar in the foreword of the guidelines.

“However, the present structural design and construction practices in Jammu & Kashmir do not take into account the effects of floods and the related problems of water inundation, which make it further important to include potential flood resistant design practices and sustainable rebuilding measures to be adopted during the reconstruction of fully damaged as well as new structures.” he states.