India working on making earthquake predictions possible

New Delhi, March 19 (IANS) India is making efforts to monitor and study earthquake pre-cursory phenomena in critical seismotectonic regions, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.

Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Y. S. Chowdary said the government initiated a programme 'Seismicity & Earthquake Precursor' to understand the earthquake generation process, and better identify possible earthquake signs, based on which useful predictions could be made.

In a written reply to the house, Chowdary said the programme, initiated by his ministry through a multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary mechanism, would help adopt an integrated approach of generation, assimilation and analyses of a variety of earthquake signs in advance.

Also underway is a project on drilling a deep bore to study in detail the ongoing earthquake generation processes in the region of the seismically active Koyna-Warna in Maharashtra, said an official statement.

The proposed scientific deep drilling investigation seeks to provide data sets to better understand the mechanisms of faulting and the physics of reservoir triggered earthquakes.

It also intends to contribute towards earthquake hazard assessment and develop models for earthquake forecast in future.