India lost chance to record shocks as project to collect data for analysis lose funding

NEW DELHI: Could India have lost seismic data over funding issues related to a key project? A March 2015 letter from the director of the now defunct Programme for Excellence in Strong Motion Studies (Pesmos) to the ministry of earth sciences ( MoES) seems to point in that direction, even as Nepal and India struggle to come to terms with the worst earthquake in South Asia in eighty years.

The director of Pesmos was Ashok Kumar of the IIT, Roorkee. The ministry of earth sciences, in collaboration with IIT-Roorkee, had decided to install 294 strong motion accelerographs in the north, northeast and elsewhere in 2004 covering seismic zones V, IV and some cities in seismic zone III under Pesmos.

The instruments were supposed to collect data for analysis of the motion of the earth’s tectonic plates, which leads to earthquakes. Some of the data from the system has been used to set up an early warning system for earthquakes in India.

The project was supposed to have been funded until December 2014, but the money ran out in September despite favourable reports by the Project Monitoring and Advisory Committee or PMAC.

Kumar wrote to the ministry on March 26 that handing over the project to the new National Centre for Seismology in February 2015 would be acceptable "if MoES (or NCS) has made sufficient efforts to take charge of this instrumentation".