A System Engineering Approach to Disaster Resilience

Prof. Chandan Ghosh has devoted more than 30 years of his career in UG & PG teaching, research guidance, development of teaching tools & training modules for engineers, architects, and town planners. He has earned professional zeal in promoting Disaster Mitigation Technologies, including seismic base isolation, dampers, lightweight materials, etc. Besides developing some of the IEC materials such as Snake and ladder game for earthquake, flood, road safety, cyclone, DM plan for family, Prof. Ghosh has been deeply involved in conducting workshops/seminars on retrofitting, earthquake-induced damages, and landslides mitigation; taking pilot site-specific technical/experimental studies; developing/moderating of training modules; online training programs and curriculum for the self-study certificate program. He is always available for the community services and awareness campaign through experimental as well as field demonstration, social media, and video documentaries. Prof. Ghosh is a prolific motivator in varied sustainable development activities, including bio-engineering measures for landslides/erosion controls, lake water cleaning by natural means, and urban flood mitigations. As a recognition of his seminal contributions, Prof. Ghosh received Prof. Leonard prize for the best doctoral thesis-1993, CIDC-Vishwakarma Awards-2013, IGS-Shri H.C. Verma Golden Jubilee Award-2013, and Lifetime achievement Award-2019 by IGS-Delhi Chapter. Dr. Sreevalsa Kolathayar pursued his M.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and served as International Research Staff at UPC BarcelonaTech Spain. He is presently Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Karnataka. Dr. Kolathayar has authored six books and over 80 research articles. He is Associate Editor of two International Journals. His broad research areas are geotechnical earthquake engineering, geosynthetics & geonaturals, landslide, disaster risk reduction and water geotechnics. He is currently the Secretary of the Indian chapter of International Association for Coastal Reservoir Research (IACRR), and Executive Committee Member of Indian Society of Earthquake Technology. In 2017, The New Indian Express honored Dr. Kolathayar with 40 under 40 - South India's Most Inspiring Young Teachers Award. He is the recipient of ISET DK Paul Research Award from Indian Society of Earthquake Technology, IIT Roorkee. He received IEI Young Engineers Award by The Institution of Engineers (India), in recognition of his contributions in the field of Civil Engineering. He was recently featured in Geostrata Magazine by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Dr Sreevalsa is the Organizing Chair of the Virtual Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (VCDRR 2021).