Prof. M. L. Sharma

Prof. M. L. Sharma has more than 35 years of experience in teaching, research and consultancy in the area of Earthquake Engineering.  In addition to regular teaching he has prepared many films on Earthquake Engineering and participated in short term courses and international projects on earthquake engineering. Presently, Prof. Sharma is Heading International Center of Excellence for Dams at IIT Roorkee, Program Advisor to South Asia Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (SAADRI) and Vice President of India Society of Earthquake Science.

Prof. Sharma has rendered expert advice to more than 500 engineering sites in India and abroad regarding the seismic hazard and risk assessment.  The engineering projects include major HE projects, dams, nuclear power plants, thermal power plants, bridges, high rise buildings etc. He has successfully attempted to analyse and quantify the uncertainties in final hazard estimates using PSHA. His work on seismic hazard assessment and soil characterizations has lead to the seismic microzonation of National Capital Region of Delhi. Based on the seismic hazard assessment and soil characteristic studies carried out by Prof. Sharma, the seismic microzonation of Dehradun city, Srinagar city (J&K), and Phuentsholing city in Bhutan has also been carried out which is further being used for seismic risk assessment in terms of money and death tolls.

His long association with the strong ground motion program of Department of Science and Technology has resulted in development of strong ground motion attenuation relationship for the horizontal and vertical PGA based on Indian Strong Motion data which was upgraded to spectral attenuation relationship. The relationship has been extensively used to estimate seismic hazard in India and worldwide.

Prof. Sharma played key role in the deployment of the first Digital Telemetered Seismological Sample Array in Garhwal Kumaoun Himalaya in 1985-86 in India with the aim to study present seismic status and RIS around Tehri dam.  The acquired high quality digital data was used to estimate the source parameters for the first time using digital data in this region and the Seismic Moment Magnitude relationship for the Garhwal Himalaya was proposed by Prof. Sharma in 1994. Prof. Sharma played key role in MOU for Kalpasar studies where he is the PI of the three maor schemes for Kalpasr project in Gujarat (2012-2018).

Prof. Sharma has also palyed key role in MOU between Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand for the seismic instrumentation of the dams under DRIP program of CWC. This MOU is being signed on Sept 15, 2017 in Bhopal.

Prof. Sharma introduced the studies based on SAR interferometry for the deformation estimations and has been instrumental in starting the use of GIS/GPS related earthquake studies and application of SAR differential interferromtry for shallow earthquake. The convergence rates between Ganga and Yamuna Tear near the Himalayan Frontal Fault has been estimated using this methodology.

To initialize the EEW in India, IIT Roorkee was the first institute to deploy 84 sensors in seismic gap region of Garhwal Himalaya with the help of Ministry of Earth Sciences in 2015. This project was thus successfully completed in March 2017 but no measures were taken to issue the warning to public. Subsequently, in May 2017 Government of Uttarakhand  sanctioned a project to  IIT Roorkee for maintenance of present earthquake early warning system, installation of 100 additional sensors covering Kumaun region, installation of sirens in SEOC at Dehradun and all district HQs of Uttarakhand and installation of 100 sirens in cities of Dehradun and Haldwani. It will be the first instant when EEW will go public.

He has been actively associated with many international programs specially with Norway, Mexico and Taiwan for disaster mitigation. The lessons learnt through many damage surveys of moderate earthquake carried out by him have resulted in advice for future in form of many of his international publications. Based on the contributions by Prof. Sharma in disaster mitigation he has been awarded the A. S. Arya-IITR Disaster prevention award -2012. He has two patents and one transfer of Technology to his credit. He is Fellow of Indian Society of Earthquake Technology, Indian Geotechnical Society and Indian Geophysical Union.

Research Project

1. Development of International Centre of Excellence for dams at IIT Roorkee, PI, Ministry of Jal Shakti, 2023-2028, Rs 108.99 crores,.
2. Development of Indigenous Earthquake Early Warning System, (PI), IMPRINT2, SERB, DST, 2019-2022, New Delhi 1.20 Crores
3. Earthquake Early Warning System, (PI), Uttarakhand Government, 2017-2019, (Rs. 3.20 Crores)
4. Seismological Network Around Tehri Region (PI), THDC India Ltd., Rishikesh, 2016-2019, (Rs. 2.85 Crores)

Key Publications/Reports

1. Rawat, Deepak, M. L. Sharma, Divyesh Varade, Roshan Kumar, Debi Prasanna Kanungo, Rayees Ahmed, S. C. Gupta, Hemant Singh and Nishant Saxena (2024). Early Warning Potential of Regional Seismic Network: Seismic Assessment of One of the Precursors of Chamoli 2021 Disaster, Earth Systems and Environment, 8(1), 85-104.
2. Lallawmawma, C., M.L. Sharma, J.D. Das (2023). Probabilistic seismic hazard and risk assessment of Mizoram, North East India, Natural Hazards Research. 3(3), 447-463.
3. Rathore, Govind, Ashok Kumar, R.S. Jakka and M. L. Sharma (2023). Design and implementation of earthquake early warning dissemination mobile app for Uttarakhand (India), Journal of Seismology, 27:203–217
4. Nath, R.R., L. Sharma, A. Goswami, K. Sweta and N. Pareek (2021). Landslide Susceptibility Zonation With Special Emphasis on Tectonic Features for Occurrence of Landslides in Lower Indian Himalaya, Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, 49(5), 1221-1238
5. Das, R., M. L. Sharma, H. R. Wason, D. Chaudhary, G. Gonzalez (2019). A Seismic Moment Magnitude Scale, Bull. Seis. Soc. Am.,109(4), 1542-1555.