An Evaluation Study of Problems and Practices of Shallow Foundations for Combined Flood, Earth quake and Settlement Prone Areas

The development of cities along the bank of river is the common characteristics of all Indian cities developed in the past. Earthquakes are quite common in cities located at the foothills of a hill/mountain range due to its location near the hill/mountain. Settlement and development of cracks in buildings and foundations is the symptom left behind by the earthquake/flood. The low lying areas near the water body are also settlement prone as the construction of foundation of buildings takes place on filled up/unstable or weak soil. The combined effect of flood, earthquake& settlement makes extremely difficult to adopt the techniques of either flood resistant buildings or earthquake resistant buildings. Though all the problems cannot be solved but the life threatening collapses can be prevented and damage limited to repairable proportions can be achieved by adopting the proper remedial measures. In this paper through the evaluation study of Gorakhpur city located at the foothill of Himalayan Hill Range, the possible damages& remedial measures/practices of foundations adopted in flood prone, earthquake prone& settlement prone areas in individual cases, an attempt have been made to search the solution of problems in the development for building foundations subjected to combined effect of flood, earthquake& settlement. An innovative foundation technique based on the use of stone ballast, sal wood sleepers, which have long lasting life, stone masonry work in foundation and use of coarse sand needs to be designed/developed for the shallow foundations in flood plus earthquake and settlement prone area.