dr sekhar chandra dutta talks to ruby nanda on the various features and scopes involving earthquake engineering professor and head of school of infrastructure at indian institute of technology bhubaneswar dr sekhar chandra duttas fields of research involves structural dynamics earthquake engineering and wind engineering he spoke about the interesting field of earthquake engineering what is earthquake engineering earthquake engineering is an area of specialisation under structural engineering in civil engineering branch structural engineers look after the structural safety of a building they look into the placement spacing dimension and bending of rods in a building with increasing earthquakes the prime challenge today is for creating buildings which may survive the impact during earthquake at a particular site earthquake engineering studies the stress distribution in structures buildings bridges dams and others of moderate or major earthquakes affecting any building taking the estimated life period of any building say 100 years a structural engineer tries to study the maximum level of lateral shaking that a building can expect during an earthquakecyclone and tries to design the same so that it can withstand the loading it also involves restoration of damaged buildings to give back the same strength or retrofit it for enhancing strength what is the scope for students taking up earthquake engineering studies this subject also has very good prospects in research m tech and phd level students can do advanced research in earthquake and cyclone resistant structures and help the society it is legally mandatory for all structures to be certified by a structural engineer for assessing structural safety there are many global and national firms like eil rites and ces etc which provide consultancy services where one can work there is tremendous opportunity out there in this field which are the qualities required for doing well in this field which institutes offer courses in earthquake engineering for doing well in earthquake engineering one has to do a lot of brainwork a student has to be very good in mathematics and physics with a knack for mechanics it is a myth that girls cannot do well in civil engineering rather they can do very well in this subject all old iits and among new ones iit bhubaneswar and iit gandhinagar provide opportunities for earthquake studies and research abroad the some of the best institutes are stanford university university of california state university new york at suny buffalo tokyo institute of technology tokyo university etc how can earthquake engineering be helpful for the society this field has direct bearing for the society we should understand that earthquakes do not kill people but the faulty structures do when they collapse the problems faced by the developing countries like india which cannot afford costly structures can be solved through research for instance strength of masonry structures can be increased by simple measures like fixing a wire mesh or binding it with pp bands to the brick wall before plastering which increases the wall resistance several times for earthquakes and cyclones while costing