Showing posts with label National Centre for Seismology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Centre for Seismology. Show all posts

Sunday 30 July 2017

Delhi, Chandigarh among 29 cities and towns highly vulnerable to quakes

Twenty-nine Indian cities and towns, including Delhi and capitals of nine states, fall under “severe” to “very severe” seismic zones, according to the National Centre for Seismology (NCS).

A majority of these places are in the Himalayas, one of the most seismically active regions in the world.

Delhi, Patna (Bihar), Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir), Kohima (Nagaland), Puducherry, Guwahati (Assam), Gangtok (Sikkim), Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), Dehradun (Uttarakhand), Imphal (Manipur) and Chandigarh fall under seismic zones IV and V.

Kusala Rajendran, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and an expert on paleoseismology, earthquake recurrence and active tectonics, said most of the cities in the list have a high population density and fall in the Indo-Gangetic plains.

“The Himalayan arc, stretching from the upper Assam region to Jammu and Kashmir, is known to be a high seismic zone and these cities in the Indo-Gangetic belt fall within reasonable limits of the Himalayas. So repercussions are bound to be felt there,” she observed.

M Rajeevan, secretary, ministry of Earth Sciences, said 31 new earthquake observatories will come up in the country by March next year. At present, there are 84 observatories.

This is being done to detect and record earthquake parameters more accurately and identify possible precursors of tremors.

The NCS has also carried out microzonation of cities like Delhi and Kolkata to study the possible impact of earthquake in these mega cities.

Source:-Hindustantimes

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