Earthquakes, related landslides and tsunamis are among South Asia's most intense natural hazards. This region will be home to close to 2 billion people by mid-century the largest regional concentration of people in all of human history. Over 1.5 billion of this population will live in India, where approximately two-thirds of the landmass is exposed to geo-hazards, placing a larger population at risk than the Pacific 'ring of fire' (Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council [BMTPC] 2006). The losses caused by a future great Indian earthquake to urban concentrations and densely populated rural areas like the northern Gangetic and eastern Brahamaputra plains, the western coastal plains or in the Himalayas could be devastating in terms of casualties and economic loss (Khattri 1987, 1992). Estimates of 19-50 million people and 5 million buildings at risk from a great Himalayan earthquake are not unreasonable (Bilham, Gaur and Molnar 2001; Khattri 2006) with scenarios of over 0.1 million casualties in a single urban event (Arya 1992; Sinha and Adarsh 1999). The Great Aceh earthquake and induced Indian Ocean tsunami (2005) and the more recent Sichuan (2008) earthquake in China demonstrate that large exposed population concentrations, coupled with high vulnerability, can lead to massive casualties and destruction (ADB, UN and World Bank 2005; Telford et al., 2006, World Bank, 2005).
