Earthquake Loss Information System for the City of Guwahati, Assam, India

The city of Guwahati is one of the most rapidly growing cities in India, at the same time being the most important hub of Northeast (NE) India. According to the reported seismic activity in India, the entire Northeastern region, where Guwahati City falls into, is among the most seismically active parts of the Indian subcontinent and even of entire South Asia. The seismicity of NE India has been proven by many damaging earthquakes in the past and is also reflected by the seismic zoning map of India’s current seismic building code which classifies the entire region into Zone V, i.e. the country’s highest seismic zone. The present chapter describes the different technical aspects that were implemented for the development of an earthquake loss information system for the city of Guwahati. The development of the system has involved both extensive fieldwork and computational efforts including ground shaking modelling considering soil amplification effects, defining ground shaking scenarios for earthquakes on local active faults and significant historical earthquakes, demarcation of the Guwahati City area and its subdivision into geographical units, the definition of building typology classes and generating their vulnerability functions, collection of building inventory data and socio-economic information throughout the city and finally the computation of damage and loss scenarios. The developed earthquake loss information model for Guwahati City can be used as guidance to local authorities on future city planning and earthquake mitigation and response actions.