MODULAR DESIGN OF HOUSES IN HILLY REGIONS

Abstract

Shelter is one of the basic needs of the human beings. During the past earthquakes large number of these traditional shelters have been destroyed, particularly in rural and hilly areas. This resulted in loss of lives, thousands or even more. The suggestions have been made earlier to adopt new technique, so that the residences become earthquake resistant. But even today those practices could not be adopted by the majority of population living in the region which is either far beyond the road head or at higher altitudes of the region. And thus there is need to modify the traditional construction so as to make these shelters to withstand lateral forces caused due to .occurrence of earthquake. Although the highly developed techniques are available now a days which can provide a construction which can withstand even under severe earthquakes. But the need of the region is to suggest techniques which are compatible with the economic conditions of the persons of the region. The engineered construction are supposed to be beyond the limit of their economic resources and also at the same time the skill required for the same is not available at every place of the region. Hence an attempt is made to develope techniques which can be utilized to make the traditional shelters resistive to earthquakes to a safer extent. At the same time the traditional way of construction is also used as much as possible. The environmental problem coming into the existance, due to the falling of trees, significantly because of large scale use of timber in the construction is also to be considered. ( i ) For the purpose of this work the regions selected are hills of Uttarkashi and•Mussoorie. The suggestions made in the thesis work will be going to benefit the persons of the region, particularly the rural population. Since using the suggestions will not increase the cost heavily it is expected that the same can be beared by the villagers.