Abstract
The city Jabalpur falls in zone III of the seismic hazard zone map of India (IS: 1893–2002) (IS: 1893 (2002), Indian Standard Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design of Structures, Bureau of Indian Standard, 5th Revision.). Earthquakes of intensity up to VI or higher and magnitude of 6.0 or more have occurred in past at Jabalpur. In the present context, an earthquake of M 6.0 (IMD, USGS) occurred at 04 h, 21 Min 30.8 s (IST) on May 22, 1997 (Kanwar in A Geoscientific Study, Geological Survey of India, Special Publication No. 51:i–iv, 2000). This paper describes the risk assessment of the civil engineering structures built on reclaimed lands in Jabalpur. The problems that are likely to arise wherever major civil engineering structures are being planned on lands that have been reclaimed from perennial waterlogged areas or from the areas reclaimed by backfilling the old surface water bodies and old garbage dumps. This practice is being followed in Jabalpur city which once supported 52 major and 84 small water bodies out of which nearly 100 have lost their existence and residential colonies now occupy lands reclaimed from them. As in Jabalpur so also in other towns, this activity is going on without considering the negative effects of using reclaimed land for major constructions. In the present paper, a study of risk assessment on the structure built on reclaimed land has done during the 1997 earthquake at Jabalpur.
