The Republic Day earthquake of 26 January 2001 in Gujarat clearly demonstrated the earthquake vulnerability profile of our country. It created a considerable interest amongst the professionals associated with construction activities in any form, as well as the non-professionals regarding the earthquake safety issues. While the subject of earthquake engineering has its own sophistication and a lot of new research is being conducted in this very important subject, it is also important to widely disseminate the basic concepts of earthquake resistant constructions through simple language. With this objective, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK) and the Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC), a constituent of the Ministry of Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation, Government of India, launched the IITK-BMTPC Series on Earthquake Tips in early 2002. Professor C. V. R. Murty was requested to take up the daunting task of expressing difficult concepts in very simple language, which he has very ably done.

In all 32 Tips has been released and is targeted at persons interested in building construction. The Tips cover topics such as basic introduction to earthquakes and terminology such as magnitude and intensity, concepts of earthquake resistant design, and aspects of a seismic design and construction of buildings. Utmost care is taken to ensure that despite complexity of the concepts, the Tips are simple and unambiguous. To ensure the highest quality of technical contents, every Tip is carefully reviewed by two or more experts, both within and outside India and their feedback is used before finalizing the Tips.

The Tips are released for publication to all interested journals, magazines, and newspapers. The Tips are also placed at the web site of Building Materials & Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC) (www.bmtpc.org). The project has succeeded way beyond our own expectations: a large number of journals of architecture, construction and structural engineering, and many prestigious newspapers have published some or all the Tips.

Development of the Tips was financially supported by the BMTPC New Delhi. Financial support for this reprint and dissemination was provided by the National Programme on Earthquake Engineering Education (www.nicee.org/npeee) and the Joan and Haresh Shah family funds, respectively, which is gratefully acknowledged.

We hope that the readers will find the Tips useful when constructing buildings in earthquake prone areas and will consult the expert for finalising their design and construction details. Earthquake Tips are now available in Hindi, Punjabi and Marathi also.We welcome comments and suggestions; please email to nicee@iitk.ac.in.