Introduction

Earthquake problems are not new to India. Some of the major earthquakes of the world occurred in our country and neighborhood areas. During past 2 decades, we have witnessed 8 moderate earthquakes: Bihar-Nepal border (M6.4) in 1988, Uttarkashi, Uttaranchal (M6.6) in 1991, Latur, Maharastra (M6.3) in 1993, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh (M6.0) in 1997, Chamoli, Uttaranchal (M6.8) in 1999, Bhuj, Gujarat (M6.9) in 2001 and Muzafarrabad, Kashmir (M7.8) in 2005. These earthquakes caused innumerable property and life loss. These events occurred with a time gap of 2 ~ 3 years. Inspite of this, general awareness regarding earthquakes and earthquake resistant constructions is very low in the country. Pre-disaster planning \textbf{i.e., }mitigation and preparedness can have a great impact on minimizing the post-disaster response\textbf{ i.e.,} emergency, rescue and rehabilitation. This also reduces tragedy and suffering to great extent. For this we can take the advantage of information technology developments for dissemination of knowledge to masses. Efficient simulation tools can be prepared disaster simulation.

Some ongoing projects in this area are:

Educational material on earthquake engineering & structural dynamics

Simulation of vulnerability of economic zones for emergency planning

Simulation of optimum evacuation in large public gathering places

Dynamic behaviour of furniture

Robotics for rescue of injured people during disaster

GIS applications for disaster assessment

Estimation of Tsunami travel time

Communication systems during earthquake emergency