Speakers at Research Symposium on Saturday urged to share knowledge on earthquake and seismic hazards to avoid disasters and protect people from their harmful impact.
Experts from within country and abroad participated in this GSP Post Earthquake 2005 Research Symposium on Seismotectonics and Seismic Hazards in Pakistan organised by the Ministry of Petroleum and the Geological Survey of Pakistan.
"It is necessary to mobilise the scientific knowledge and technological and engineering know-how to assess earthquake hazards and strengthen disaster mitigation measures," said Secretary Petroleum, Ahmed Waqar, in his inaugural address to the symposium.
He said in many countries of the Asia region including Pakistan, disasters caused by natural and environmental hazards resulted in a heavy toll in terms of human lives as well as damage to economic and social infrastructure.
He said the government has already taken many steps to formulate a comprehensive strategy to cope up with national disasters. Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz had approved the establishment of a National Disaster Management Commission (N.D.M.C.) as well as a National Disaster Management Authority (N.D.M.A.). "This authority will be supported by all the relevant departments and organisations," Waqar said.
He said the NDMC is responsible to ensure co-ordination for disaster risk management in its broader sense including preparedness, prevention, mitigation, response and recovery to oversee the integration of disaster like management issues into sectoral development plans and to oversee the implementation of this policy through NDMA. He hoped the symposium would help a lot in effective dispensation of duties by the certain departments and organisations to cope with the challenges like earthquake and the participants will come up with concrete proposal at the end of the day.
Director General Geological Survey of Pakistan, Mirza Talib Hasan, in his welcome address said, the Asia region has the highest level seismicity on the planet, setting for many of the largest earthquakes. He said the majority of earthquakes in Asia regions are related to regions of plate convergence and the Himalayan region is the source of great seismic strain due to slapping of tectonic plate carrying India under the Asian plate around 2 meters per century.
"The seismic stresses thus have generated and could still cause earthquakes of high magnitude in Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh," he said, adding, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake was the result of same phenomenon.
He said optimal use of these data for regional monitoring is a major challenge that will require the exchange of data, software, and expertise among the interested nations. "This conference is being held to discuss issues related to seismic city, seismic hazards, magnitude calibrations and broad band data and also to present the post 2005 earthquake research data," Talib said.
"In the light of the suggestions and recommendations, collaborated research activities were undertaken in the earthquake affected areas on seismo-tectonics and natural geo-hazards including landslide and debris flow," he said.
The objective of this conference is to present the data on research work conducted during the last one year on seismo-tectonics and geo-hazard and find scientific and technical solutions in the light of research data. It had two technical sessions one related to geology and seismo-tectonic studies and other relating to seismic zoning map, geo-engineering and geo-hazard.
The topics in the first session addressed the post seismic deformation after the earthquake and kinematics of the salt range and the siwalik thrust belt beside the dynamics of surface rupture. In the second session the papers were read on seismic zoning map and engineering geological conditions of Hattian Bala landslide.