INTRODUCTION

Earthquake, for sure, is one of nature’s most unpredictable hazard. Over the past so many years, we have witnessed a staggering rise in seismic activity all over the globe. In India, we are sitting on a seismically active zone, with more than 59% of the land being susceptible to earthquakes (as per the Vulnerability Atlas of India [1]). In India and its neighboring countries (within 300 km), there have been more than 2700 incidents of earthquakes of magnitude 4 and above which have recorded over the last 10 years, making it an average of 22 earthquakes per month. While standards are being upgraded continuously to take into consideration higher seismic performance of structures, there is also a need to strengthen many existing structures to meet the current seismic demand. Also, it may be required to address the deficiency of multiple structures arising out of several reasons like ageing, change of usage, increase in the load, construction errors, etc.

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