The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Disaster management: “buildings, flyovers should comply with guidelines”

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 27, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Disaster management: “buildings, flyovers should comply with guidelines”

Staff Reporter

States told to set up Disaster Management Authorities
“Sensitising school students is important”

CHENNAI: Infrastructure such as flyovers and buildings need to comply with building guidelines prescribed by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) from the Eleventh Five Year Plan period, N. Vinod Chandra Menon, member of the Authority, said here on Wednesday.

Speaking at the inauguration of an international workshop on disaster management organised by the Centre for Natural Hazards and Disaster Studies (CNHDS), University of Madras, he said the State Governments were asked to constitute State Disaster Management Authorities.

The functions of the Authorities would include checking if the respective Metropolitan Development Authorities made compliance to earthquake resistant building codes mandatory and if banks linked grant of housing loans to similar norms.

“The time has come for an extremely important transition in knowledge concerning human lives and quality of human lives,” he said, in the context the rising incidence of natural and man-made disasters.

Disaster management was a convergence of different disciplines, he said. Sensitising school students was important and teachers were being trained across Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas.

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Madras S.Ramachandran said changes in climatic scenario and environmental degradation affected human population in many ways. “We propose to offer a postgraduate diploma and full-time master’s programme in the discipline.”

CNHDS director V.Ram Mohan said the centre collaborated with institutions such as the Middle East Technical University and Kyoto University, Japan, to facilitate an international perspective on disaster management. Katalin Demeter, senior urban development specialist, World Bank Institute, and Polat Gulkan from the Disaster Management Research Centre, Middle East Technical University, participated.

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