Disaster Education and Management (PDF)

Dr. R.K. Bhandari is a noted geohazards researcher, a teacher, and a practitioner. Early scientific work of the author was on landslides in the Indian Himalayas, mudslides of the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Sheppey in the United Kingdom, and on landslides in the Central Highlands of SriLanka. The great Malpa rock-avalanche-tragedy of 1998, the Orissa super cyclone of 1999, the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 are some of the recent disastrous events on which he has lectured and written extensively. His major exposure to human-induced disaster came with the terrorist bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003, and the consequent evacuation of his team from Baghdad. As the director of the UN-HABITAT programme in war-torn Iraq, he was responsible for post-disaster housing of internally displaced people under very difficult ground conditions at the most trying time in Iraq's history.

The author is the recipient of numerous medals, awards and honors including the prestigious 2012 Varnes Medal of the International Consortium of Landslides; Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; Scholarship of the Royal Commission of the U.K. for the Exhibition of 1851, Bhasin Foundation Award for Science and Technology; Jaikrishna Prize; Kuekalmann Award of Indian Geotechnical Society; Disaster Prevention Award of Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee; and the Distinguished Engineer Award of the Institution of Engineers (India). He is a PhD in Soil Mechanics from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London; a Fellow of Institution of Civil Engineers (London); and a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering.