Disaster Management and Risk Reduction: Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Approaches in the Indian Context

This book presents select proceedings of North-East Research Conclave (NERC 2022) that will help pave way toward disaster risk reduction through a holistic and multidisciplinary approach. The book discusses topics, such as rapid pace of climate change, its deleterious effects on nature and natural systems, human interventions in altering the natural geographical and geological systems, widespread urbanization, recurrent unwarranted rainfall and cloud bursts, unprecedented flooding, catastrophic landslides, dam breakages, glacial outbursts, snow avalanches, seismicity and its impacts, liquefaction, and wreaking environmental pollution leading to unimaginable toll on lives, property and economy. The book also discusses approaches to address such issues and frame a refined path towards a sustainable future, such as a three-fold approach like – Awareness, Inferences and Implementations. For this approach, it is ardently necessary to understand the core reasoning behind the disasters, their impact on the socio-economic contexts, and the ways to mitigate them. The book can be a valuable reference for beginners, researchers, and professionals interested in disaster risk reduction and allied fields.

Dr. Sudip Mitra is the founding head of the Centre for Disaster Management & Research (CDMR) at IIT Guwahati and a faculty of the School of Agro and Rural Technology (SART). In his 23 years of professional career, he has been actively involved in climate change, adaptation, and disaster risk reduction (DRR) research, policy, and outreach. His present research looks at climate-smart agriculture and the application of indigenous resources and technologies for the enhancement of rural livelihood. He is a Fulbright Fellow and visiting faculty at the University of California, Davis, USA and Keio University, Japan. He served as a task force member of MNREGA convergence of schemes under the Ministry of Rural Development and member of the Global Technology Watch Group, TIFAC, Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Science, India (NASI) and is also the editorial board member of international journals of repute.

Dr. Kaustubh Dasgupta is a faculty member at the Department of Civil Engineering and an adjunct faculty member at the Centre for Disaster Management and Research in Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati and completed his undergraduate studies in civil engineering from Bengal Engineering College Shibpur and master’s and Ph.D. programs in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. After his undergraduate studies, he worked in Development Consultants Limited, Kolkata, and Reliance Industries Limited, Jamnagar, for three years.  His areas of research interest are seismic behavior of reinforced concrete structures, seismic soil-structure interaction, and seismic vulnerability assessment.

Dr. Arindam Dey is currently an associate professor in Civil Engineering Department at IIT Guwahati and an adjunct faculty at the Center for Disaster Management and Research (CDMR), IIT Guwahati. He obtained his B.E. from Jadavpur University Kolkata, M.Tech. and Ph.D. from IIT Kanpur, and was a post-doctoral researcher at University of Molise, Italy. He was a recipient of the “Fellowship for Young Indian Researchers” from the Ministry of Italy. He works in varied fields of geotechnical engineering, including foundation engineering, geotechnical earthquake engineering, geotechnical and geophysical investigation, and computational geotechnics. He holds special expertise in the fields of disaster management, earthquake and landslide hazard mappings and mitigations, liquefaction mitigation through ground improvement, and disasters originating from dam and embankment failures. Apart from being members of IGS, IST, and FOSET, he held a position in the prestigious TC-208 Committee on “Slope Stability and Landslides” hosted by International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) from 2018-2023. He is also an integral part of the Codal Committee of Indian Roads Congress (IRC) SP-102. He has published more than 250 technical documentations of national and international repute. He has received many research awards from IGS and ISSMGE. He has delivered several invited lectures in India and abroad and is a reviewer for several national and international journals.

Dr. Rajshree Bedamatta is a professor of Economics at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and an adjunct faculty at the Centre for Disaster Management and Research in Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. She is trained in the field of development economics, and her research interests cut across the applied areas of food and agriculture, health, labor markets, education, and governance. One of her emerging engagements is action-research in disruptions caused by disasters and its socio-economic impact on vulnerable groups of population.