E-Paper
Think of developing resilient cities: Expert
SINCE THE terrorism has become an unending battle, future generation should think of developing resilient cities, as the urban areas with dense population, ecological imbalances and inappropriate constructions have become vulnerable to disaster of terrorism, said Baboo Lal of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Patna.
SINCE THE terrorism has become an unending battle, future generation should think of developing resilient cities, as the urban areas with dense population, ecological imbalances and inappropriate constructions have become vulnerable to disaster of terrorism, said Baboo Lal of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Patna.
Lal, who had come to attend two-day seminar on “Engineering Response to Hazards of Terrorism” told Hindustan Times that in a resilient city very few buildings collapsed and very few power outrages occurred and the loss to life and the property was minimal.
Speaking about the design of a resilient city, Baboo Lal said that this city was a sustainable network of physical and social systems. While the physical systems included roads, buildings, means of communication and topography, the social system included formal, informal, ad-hoc and stable human associations, which operated in various areas, organisations and task forces.
Resilient physical systems were dispersed rather than site specific, were composed of small units, employ standardisation, required no unique skills, used safe designs and were stable. On the other hand, the resilient social systems were compatible with diverse value systems and could satisfy multiple goals giving benefits and cost equitably and with high accessibility.
The visionary engineer suggested that the resilient city should aim at conducting vulnerability analysis, assessing potential threats, analysing control methods and inducting the models of information technology. For bomb attacks, the resilient city should examine structural load path, blast retrofits in fill wall systems such as steel-stud walls to develop static resistance function for wall systems and experimental evaluation of steel-stud wall. Systems under the blast load.
