About Seismic Zone and the earthquake resistant building in Bangalore

In my several of earlier posts I have raised my concerns about the consideration of the seismic factors on the high raise apartment has been taken care or not.I just browsed to find out the seismic zone where Bangalore is placed.

Seismic Hazard of Karnataka

Source:

http://asc-india.org/seismi/seis-karnataka-goa.htm

The seismic hazard map of India was updated in 2000 (5) by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). According to the new map, the state of Karnataka lies in Zones II and III. The coastal districts as well as the northern interior districts along the border with Maharashtra, lie in Zone III, where a maximum MSK intensity of VII can be expected. The remaining districts, as well as the city of Bangalore lie in Zone II. Interestingly, the Bellary region, which experienced a strong earthquake in the 1840's has been downgraded to Zone II.

The 1984 BIS Zoning map had placed it in Zone III. It must be noted that BIS estimates the hazard, based in part, on previous known earthquakes. Since the earthquake database in India is still incomplete, especially with regards to earthquakes prior to the historical period (before 1800 A.D.), these zones offer a rough guide of the earthquake hazard in any particular region and need to be regularly updated (See also: GSHAP Hazard Map for Karnataka & Goa).

See my earlier posts:

http://eastindian-mike.blogspot.com/2008/10/recent-collapse-of-high-raise-apartment.html

http://eastindian-mike.blogspot.com/2008/09/lifestyle-greenage-apartments-bangalore.html

Interestingly  an article in Hindu written by  CVR Murthy has drawn my attention( dt 10/06/2006).

Quake-resistant buildings needed now

Many unprofessional players in the real estate area exploit the common man's ignorance on this aspect

About 60 per cent of India's land area is under the threat of moderate to severe seismic hazard. Nine earthquakes in the Indian tectonic region over the past 17 years have provided constant reminders of the vulnerability of Indian construction.

It was the Bhuj earthquake of 2001 that stirred-up maximum concern on the vulnerability of Indian constructions, particularly the modern reinforced cement concrete (RCC) constructions.

The Indian public is under-informed and under-educated on earthquake resistant design and construction. Let us highlight the seismic vulnerability of the large number of a class of reinforced concrete multi-storey buildings being constructed in the urban areas.

These buildings have open ground storey to accommodate parking and 230 mm size columns in the ground storey.

The typical RCC buildings in India are made of frames consisting of vertical and horizontal members. The former are called columns while the latter members consist of (a) slabs, that is, the flat, plate-like parts of the building on which people stand, walk and conduct themselves in the building and (b) beams, that is, the stiff, rib-like parts of the building running under the slab but between columns which support the slabs.

Stilt structures

The typical buildings being built in India accommodate parking in the ground storey. Most buildings having parking in the ground storey have no masonry walls built between any columns.

While having parking in the ground storey is not the concern, having all masonry walls removed and leaving the columns bare is the crux of the matter. Such buildings are abruptly flexible and weak in the ground storey and perform poorly during earthquakes.

Many unprofessional players in the real estate development industry are doling out substandard civil engineering products and exploiting the ignorance of the common man on many technical aspects of civil engineering. For example, most RCC frame buildings in the present context use the same 230mm (9-inch) wide columns in them irrespective of the number of storeys they support above them.

Let us focus on the use of 230 mm wide columns in a special class of buildings.

A stark feature of these columns and also the most unsafe aspect of the buildings they hold is that their size is fixed - 230 mm. Irrespective of the overall height of the building (1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 14 or even 21 storeys), the location of the building (in severe seismic zone or in low seismic zone), the type of soil strata underneath the building (soft soil or hard rock) and the distance between adjacent columns (2m, 3m, 4m or even 5m), the column size is unbelievably the same: 230 mm.

The person who built your apartment may not necessarily be qualified to make earthquake-resistant buildings. This is because quake design has not been taught in any college at the under-graduate level since Independence; graduates from government colleges in Gujarat passing out in 2007 will be first set to have basic knowledge on earthquake resistant design .

Open ground storey buildings have consistently shown poor performance during past earthquakes across the world; a large number of them have collapsed.

The presence of walls in upper storeys makes them many times stiffer than the open ground storey. Thus, the upper storeys move almost together as a single block and most of the horizontal displacement of the building occurs in the soft ground storey itself. Thus, such buildings swing back and forth like inverted pendulums during earthquakes and the columns in the open ground storey are severely stressed.

If the columns are weak (do not have the required strength to resist these high stresses) or if they do not have adequate ductility they may be severely damaged or even lead to collapse of the building.

Neglected

In the current design practice, stiff masonry walls are neglected and only bare frames are used in design calculations. Thus, the inverted pendulum effect is not captured in the structural design.

There are several features associated with the open ground storey buildings with 230 mm wide columns that make them vulnerable during earthquakes. The vertical members in buildings support the horizontal members. So, vertical members must be stronger than the horizontal ones.

After the Bhuj earthquake, the Indian Seismic Code IS: 1893 (Part 1) - 2002 has included special design provisions. First, it specifies when a building becomes soft or weak. Second, it specifies higher design forces for the soft storey.

C.V.R. MURTY

Mumbai attack and the questions

The recent terrorist attack at Mumbai brings a lot of sad and a grief feeling to the mind. The brave ones who fought against the terror and who lost their life. Also for the victim civilians who died due to such an attack. We should pray let their soul rest in peace and would always remember with the historic tragedy.Those who have lost their life  for the war against  terror  should be given importance in the history books like any other war this country underwent in the past.

It has proved once again that human life is very uncertain and no one knows that they are alive tomorrow. Unimaginable attack. The way TV live broadcast in the channels clearly shown that a situation was like a war happening in an English movie. I was just thinking and it made me to think that historical invasion would have been always like this.

I was just drilling down with my own questions about the people involved in the terror and the tackling of the issue:

• How dare they are to come to a place whose sea route itself they are not aware off?
• The lads were very young what has been driving them to commit suicide?
• Are they not aware they are damaging?
• Are they not aware the purpose of their life is to destroy?
• If they are not aware what else is the compelling force made them to involve in such kind of activity?
• Who are there parents? Are they not aware of about their son what he is doing? Are they willingly surrendered or sold their son for money? If they sold them for money means for destruction which means they are aware?
• By doing destruction what they are going to achieve?
• Has God given this life to destruct some body?
• The intelligence agencies should be aware of such a possible attack(Even chairman of Taj Hotel confirmed that). Why a tough action has not been taken?
• What was the gap between the intelligence reports and the law enforcement and the security agencies?
• Assuming the limitation to governmental workforce why public has not been made aware to report such clandestine activity?
• Why government should not use the public intelligence and propagate its theme against terror that the citizen responsible?
• There is definite responsibility for the Government to give a feeling of security to the human lives. But are they looked up seriously?
• We have enough history to know that we are always vulnerable for attacks why the coastal guards couldn’t track such movement?
• Are we protective or shielded against any more vulnerable attacks?
• Our satellite and the intelligence reporting gadgets doesn't have the system to analyze the movement of such an explosive material from one place to another?
• Have they monitored the internet traffic and the key suspicious information's searched through search engine? 

Is it possible?

Every citizen of the country should be made aware and to be cautioned to share the knowledge about the unwanted social element in the system to the governmental intelligence agencies .

When I mean it is the responsibility of the citizens. The informer citizen shouldn't have any hassles to provide the information and they should be protected.

  I would strongly believe that the investigating and intelligence minds are equally very stronger than any other country.I am very well aware that when the government gives appointment orders to some of the senior positions like IAS,IPS or a DSP post there is still a process to check the personal credentials of the people.There is a social engineering method which is practiced by CID of  the government and personally to assess a person without his knowledge and a report will be submitted to government before an appointment. The same method was literally adapted while nab one of the sandal wood smuggler in south India by name Veerappan whom he not even aware off.

Some of the highest interrogative minds of the world are there in our country and I am doubtful whether the government uses them effectively or not?If we just give a full hands and power to such minds they would even map the minds who have such possible motive.

The government shouldn't ignore the intelligence reports it is again 1 out of 100 kind of feeling.Nothing has happened as reported so we keep silent that attitude.If one happen out of 100 then we have seen the worst at Mumbai incidents.We should aware that many of the incidents have been prevented through the intelligence reports.

Now all the system are awake  this anti social elements will rest and watch every thing to settle and  when the system is weak and wait till such time to  sleep (including the public like you and me), the they will try for a possible attack. It is like driving a long night  journey through the car and if the driver by chance nap for some seconds it would be a mess and ends up with accident.The government playing the role of a driver and let it not mess again.

How to monitor the internet speed ?

If you are on look out for one then online eye an internet speed monitor that is able to measure ,track and analyze the connection.

We could view the following

• Speed of the data being transferred at the real-time.
• Shall analyze and view the historical trend data with bar or line graphs
• To monitor your internet LAN connections.

• Track your internet upload and download over a period of time .Helps us to analyze the usage over a period of time.
• You would precisely able to find the number of MB the data transferred and should check within the limit if your broad band connection charges for any additional upload or download.

• You could also set an alert or caution to your limits.
• Today the cost of broad band connection is cheap and people who have taken unlimited download connection need not think of having this feature.

Otherwise it is a could tool to consider.

Any TV free 2.24

This is a freeware tool we can download and install in the system and watch TV channels worldwide and FM channels.

This freeware has been launched very recently.But I could not see much benefits on the TV channels which we surf the reason being to view the most of the channels we need to get the licensee.

 

But we could watch some channels like BBC news,Sony TV etc.The FM radio of this tool does a fair job.

 

If you want to have a web based access on TV channels .It is just Ok click to download.

To download Youtube videos.

This is in continuation to my earlier post about the downloading the video files through Mozilla Firefox box browser.You can also use the YouTube downloader a free tool.

We could able to view the video files through offline from 50 0ther sites as well.It requires adobe flash playerv8.0 or a newer one and Vb6 runtime files.

You can download and save the YouTube videos in.flv format .It also comes with an option to convert the video files into its original formats.

But in my test with Vista operating system that option was not working.  But instead of considering the down load url like keepvid you can consider having this s/w.

To download click here

Tips to download YouTube Video through Firefox browser

 

To down load Youtube videos normally I used to copy the you tube url and paste in a download site and then down load.I have a free downloaded FLV player installed in my system to play this video.

 

I have noticed some setback with some url not allows to download. Then I have found an interesting tip that we could over come such issues without download a clip just play the video once and then you can save as a FLV video format.

How to do with the Firefox browser?

 

Step 1:

Watch full Youtube video in Firefox bowser till you see the replay button on the youtube screen and don’t close the firefox browser.
Step2:

Go at following folder D:or C:\Documents and Settings\ADMIN(your system name)\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles (one by one)See the screen shot below

Step3:
Click single folder there you will get folder “Cache”. click on it. You will find a lots of unknown type files in this folder.

Step 4:

You can view the time stamp of your view and the see the size of the file .You could identify the youtube video with the memory size and the time stamp.(there might be so many small files also available at the cache).

Step5:

Copy that file and paste in the video folder and rename the file with the extension .flv.

Step6:

Play the video with FLV player.If you are with Vista’s latest codec’s package you need not worry for having to install a separate FLV player.

Crude and the puzzle

The short and most visible bubble is the speculation and the price hike of Crude and the fall of the crude oil.The analysts predictions expects a fall in the range of 40-45$ a barrel.

The OPEC countries had announced a cut in their production by about 15lac barrels a day a safeguarding measure prevented further free fall.

See the 2 different news over 6 months period.

Source:Money control.com 
News on 21/11/2008
“Crude prices dropped 7% to below the USD 50 per barrel mark. This is the lowest level since May 2005. Prices slumped as bearish US jobs report intensified concerns of a long and deep global recession and further crushed fuel demand expectations. In after hours access trading, Nymex crude is at USD 48.47 per barrel.

Deutsche Bank is now forecasting prices of crude to continue to tumble to USD 40 per barrel before the end of the year. Traders say if the equity markets continue to decline, one may see watch crude follow on their yields. Falling crude is also a positive for consumers. Right now the national average is USD 2.2 per barrel.”

NEWS Dt july 4,2008

Source:uk.reuters.com.

TOKYO, July 4 (Reuters) - U.S. crude oil futures were steady
on Friday after settling at a record the previous day, when they
also hit an all-time intraday high of nearly $146 a barrel before
trimming gains on the dollar's rise against the euro. * Front-month U.S. crude for August delivery CLc1 was up 4
cents, or 0.03 percent, at $145.33 a barrel on the Globex
electronic trading platform. On Thursday, it settled higher by
$1.72, or 1.2 percent, to a record $145.29, after trading from
$143.22 to $145.85, an all-time intraday high. * NYMEX crude has hit a record for five of the past six
trading sessions. Prices are up 51.4 percent from the beginning
of the year and 103 percent from a year ago.
[ID:nL03150097] * Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi reiterated his belief on
Thursday that the current rally in oil prices was being propelled
by speculators rather than any shortage of crude oil.

The Indian oil ministry has not given any favorable reply about the price reduction.The inflation rate has fall down well within the range of 8.9 as of November 2nd week.Inflation rate has fall down without any price reduction in the fuel price.

Any way the government had planned a provision for the oil marketing companies to a tune of 245lacs crore for the oil marketing companies working at a crude price of 125$ per barrel.Definitely government’s burden is getting reduced by not doing any change but at the same the private oil marketing companies are exploiting this opportunity to their advantage.

The outlook look like the crude may settle at a price of 60-70USD per barrel foreseeing a period of 6 months.Keeping those parameters in mind the government shall consider reducing the petrol price which in turn substantially reduces the inflation.

The soft target and the victim due to this is  the middle class hard working and the earning revenue generating community .But the government’s  inaction is still a puzzle on this with crude.What is happening really?