Geo-disaster Prevention Engineering Laboratory

Hemanta Hazarika is currently a professor in the Graduate School of Engineering and Department of Interdisciplinary Science and Innovation, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. He obtained his bachelor of technology (B. Tech) degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, India in 1990. In 1991 he moved to Japan and obtained his master's degree in Civil Engineering in 1993 from Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan, and Ph. D. degree in Geotechnical Engineering from the same university in 1996.   

 

Professor Hazarika’s research activities include disaster prevention and mitigation, soil-structure interaction, the stability of soil-structures during earthquakes and tsunami, ground improvement, application of recycled waste, and lightweight materials in construction, the stability of cut slopes, and landslides and protection against them.

 

He has more than 200 technical papers in various international journals and conferences and symposia. He has also authored two books on Soil Mechanics: “Soil Mechanics Fundamentals and Applications” (Published by CRC Press, USA) and its Japanese version (Published by Kyoritsu Publisher, Tokyo). In addition, Prof. Hazarika also served as the editor of three books on different topics related to recycling of scrap tires and natural hazards: 1) “Geotechnical Hazards from Large Earthquakes and Heavy Rainfall” published by Springer, Japan, 2) “Earthquake Hazards and Mitigations” published by I.K. International, India, and 3) “Scrap tire derived geomaterials – opportunities and challenges-“, published by CRC Press, USA.

   

Professor Hazarika has several years of teaching as well as practical and consulting experiences in Japan. He is also a foreign expert of the world’s first research center on liquefaction research called “The National Research Center for Liquefaction”, which is established in Palu, Indonesia aftermath of the devastating damage by liquefaction during the 2018 Palu Earthquake. Prof. Hazarika has been serving as JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) experts of the Government of Japan on various projects related to Asian countries. Presently he is serving as the secretary of the Asian technical committee No. 1, ATC1 (Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change-induced Geodisasters) of ISSMGE (International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering).