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Taneja and Taneja

buildings and infrastructures are highly exposed to human and economic losses environments (Jaiswal and Wald, 2008).
The earthquakes can neither be predicted nor prevented. However, preparation for such disasters in a diligent manner can
save lives and livelihoods. The reduction of seismic risk of these areas, therefore, is of primary concern policymakers, for
earthquake risk mitigation.
The past two or three decades have witnessed a growing interest of multidisciplinary researchers around the world
to assess the seismic vulnerability of major cities and analyzing the associated risk (Dolce, Kappos, Masi, et al., 2006;
Altay and Green, 2006). For analyzing the risk associated with earthquake disasters, the researchers usually prepare an
Earthquake Damage Scenario (EDS) which provides a complete picture of what will happen when such an earthquake
occurs (Altay and Green, 2006). A typical EDS exercise involves analyzing risk by estimating the probability of damages
and losses based on all the previous earthquakes, over given earthquake circumstances (i.e., tracing the possible complex
series of social, economic, and technical events likely to be triggered by an earthquake), combined with GIS technology
to check and visualize the effects of any risk mitigation strategy (Dolce, Kappos, Masi, et al., 2006; Arya, 1992). The
preparation of an EDS is a multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholders task. It involves the unification of knowledge workers
from diverse fields such as seismology, soil mechanics, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, transport
engineering, urban planning, social studies, preventive medicine, economics, and emergency response. The outcome
of such EDS exercises has helped the policymakers to (1) set up emergency plans for the immediate consequences of a
seismic event by local and national authorities; (2) plan prevention policies for medium long-term mitigation in those
areas; and (3) set up tools to forecast losses in a multidisciplinary as well as practical way.
Nations across the world started to use these EDSs, not just for preparing post-earthquake response plans and training
(capacity building) of the concerned personnel in various roles, but also for getting local communities involved in the
process of disaster mitigation (Arya, 1992; Dolce, Kappos, Masi, et al., 2006; Porter, Jones, Cox, et al., 2011). These
scientific EDSs also help in identifying necessary earthquake risk management programs and to develop specific shake out
exercises for public awareness. The shakeout exercises based on these scientific EDS has a positive impact on community
participation (Dolce, Kappos, Masi, et al., 2006; Bernknopf et al., 2008; Muto and Krishnan, 2011; Porter, Jones, Cox,
et al., 2011; Wein and Rose, 2011; McBride, Becker, Johnston, et al., 2019).
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) is a federal government agency, responsible for framing
policies, laying down guidelines, and best-practices for coordinating with the State Disaster Management Authorities
(SDMAs). It developed a first-ever multi-state (involving more than one state [province] government) EDS naming
M = 8 Mandi for a hypothetical earthquake of moment magnitude 8.0 in India. The developed EDS was used for
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conducting a Mega Shakeout Exercise on in the four cities of northern India, i.e., tri-cities of Mohali (Punjab), Panchkula
(Haryana) and Chandigarh (UT), and city of Shimla (Himachal Pradesh). The success of this scenario would depend
largely upon the active participation of the SDMAs, District Disaster Management Authorities (DDMAs), various line
departments and other stakeholders in coordination with the NDMA and other central ministries/agencies.
The main objective of this paper is to document and learn from the experiences for bringing about improvement in
designing and implementing EDS and conduct similar mega mock exercises in other seismically prone regions. The next
section of the paper briefly explains the background and details about developed EDS and Mega Shakeout exercise. The
third section explains the Methodology used for the evaluation of this EDS and Mega Shakeout exercise. The fourth
section discusses the findings of the evaluation and the fifth section puts forward the discussion in the form of the lesson
learned and the last section concludes the paper.

2. The Intervention: M = 8 Mandi Earthquake Scenario in India
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India lies at the north-western end of the Indo-Australian Plate, which encompasses India, Australia, a major portion of the
Indian Ocean, and other smaller countries. This plate is colliding against the huge Eurasian Plate and going under the Eurasian
Plate. Three chief tectonic sub-regions of India are the mighty Himalayas along the north, the plains of the Ganges and other
rivers, and the peninsula. The Himalayas consist primarily of sediments accumulated over long geological time in the Tethys.
The Indo-Gangetic basin with deep alluvium is a great depression caused by the load of the Himalayas on the continent.
The peninsular part of the country consists of ancient rocks deformed in the past Himalayan-like collisions (Sinha, Goyal,
Krishna, et al., 2012). The seismic zoning map of India shows that about 58% of India’s landmass is vulnerable to moderate or
severe seismic hazards, i.e., prone to shaking of Medvedev-Sponheuer-Karnik intensity VII and above (India Meteorological
Department, 2002). During the period 1990-2014, India has experienced 10 major earthquakes that have resulted in over 30,000
deaths and caused enormous damage to property and infrastructure (Meena, Shinde, Sapre, et al., 2013). The vast extent of
damage and the consequent losses of life associated with these events reflect the poor construction practice in India (Jaiswal and

International Journal of Population Studies | 2020, Volume 6, Issue 1 31