NIT student comes up with guidelines for rebuilding Jammu and Kashmir

SRINAGAR, JULY 02(KMW): Saqib Gulzar, a final year B.Tech student in the department of civil engineering at NIT Srinagar has compiled a book entitled “Preliminary Guidelines for repair, restoration, retrofitting and rebuilding of building structures in flood affected areas of Jammu & Kashmir”under the guidance of Prof. A.R.Dar, Head of civil engineering department. 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 & Kashmir to build a safer built environment against the natural disasters particularly floods & earthquakes.

“After the devastating floods that hit the state of Jammu & Kashmir in September 2014 causing colossal losses to the built infrastructure, We at NIT Srinagar thought of coming up with preliminary guidelines followed by comprehensive & exhaustive guidelines pertaining to the repair and restoration of flood damaged structures. 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, etc which make it further important to include potential flood resistant design practices & sustainable rebuilding measures to be adopted during the reconstruction of fully damaged as well as new structures.”, he adds.

The recent floods in Jammu & Kashmir have been an eye-opener to all the stakeholders such as designers, developers, engineers, government and the public where in the need to plan, design and build our infrastructure following not only the earthquake resistant guidelines but also the flood resistant housing guidelines has been greatly reinstated and deliberated and effectively proved owing to the colossal damages, death & destruction.

Pertinently, Gulzar had won Best Paper Award for his work on Jehlum in Jan 2014 at an International conference and since then has been working on different fronts to help the people of Jammu & Kashmir.

“The support and encouragement of Prof. Rajat Gupta, Director NIT Srinagar, Prof. F.A.Mir, Registrar NIT Srinagar, Prof. A.R.Dar, Prof. A.Q.Dar, Prof. M.S.Mir, Prof S.K.Bukhari and my family has been an impetus all along. I dedicate these Guidelines to the People of Jammu &Kashmir”, Gulzar added.
These Guidelines are a contribution to GK’s Rebuilding Kashmir Initiative