Research Projects

The safety and sustainability of ageing and degrading infrastructure is a significant concern in both developed and developing countries. Buildings, particularly those constructed before the modern-code era, are subject to degradation and failure due to natural and man-made factors. The proposed research aims to develop guidelines, methods, and tools for safe-life assessment of existing buildings and appropriate retrofit techniques to enhance their safety and sustainability. The objectives include documenting prevalent building typologies in India and Portugal, developing numerical models, identifying appropriate retrofit techniques, assessing the efficacy of retrofit techniques, and demonstrating the developed methodology by studying seismic risk before and after retrofitting. The study aims to provide a methodology for estimating and reducing seismic risk through retrofitting of existing housing stock, and to develop appropriate retrofit techniques and tools. The proposed framework will be illustrated for the two most commonly found building typologies in both countries. The proposed project aims to document prevalent building typologies in Indian and Portuguese housing stock, including seismic vulnerability, design code levels, and ageing and degradation effects.