Updates | preetish kakoty

Delivered a talk during People of CEGE at UCL on the 1897 Great Assam Earthquake

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I delivered a talk titled “Love Letter from Epicenter: The Story of the 1897 Great Assam Earthquake”, the following is the abstract of the talk. A related essay can be found in my blog.

Abstract On the afternoon of 12 June 1897, the eastern Himalaya region experienced one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history. What followed was an unlikely cast of characters from British-raj India: an administrator whose elegant bungalow crumbled to red dust; a geologist in Calcutta writing urgent dispatches to his wife while improvising a seismometer from tin, bamboo, and a glass bead; and a field scientist who walked the shattered landscape to produce a memoir that would anchor scientific debate for over a century. This talk traces the earthquake through these fragmented, partial, and deeply human records and follows the thread a century forward, to when two seismologists finally found the fault that caused it all, and named it after the man who had been looking in almost the right place. This is a story about science, power, and a forgotten earthquake from my hometown.

Published an article in The Conversation

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I co-authored an article with Carlos Molina Hutt on the complexities of risk reduction for older tall buildings in Vancouver in The Conversation. You can read the article here.

Joined University College London to start Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I started my Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship on a project titled “Resilience Enhancement through Multi-Hazard Recovery Analysis of Earthquake and Flood-Affected Infrastructure”. I will be part of the DE|RISC lab at University College London working with Professor Carmine Galasso.

Participated in 2025 Taiwan-Japan-New Zealand Seismic Hazard Assessment Workshop in Yilan, Taiwan.

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I participated in the 2025 Taiwan-Japan-New Zealand Seismic Hazard Assessment Workshop, where experts and leaders in the three countries and beyond shared updates on various aspects of modelling and application in respective national models. Discussions covered a wide variety of topics, including time-dependent earthquake models, nonlinear soil modelling, nonergodic ground-motion models, temporal variability in fault slip rates, physics-based ground motion simulation and applications among others.

A particularly memorable part of the workshop was the organized field trip to Hualien on Taiwan’s east coast, which experienced an Mw 7.4 earthquake in April 2024. We visited the MiDAS research facility, where distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology has been deployed along the Milun Fault. We observed preserved ground displacements from the 2024 earthquake and saw art installations that commemorate the event and raise community awareness. On the second day we explored Taroko National Park and visited multiple sites where co-seismic landslides altered the landscape. The park visitor centre hosted a thoughtfully presented exhibit documenting the damage and recovery, highlighting community efforts to restore the landscape, including replanting native species uprooted by the landslides. Although the park is not yet fully functional, the visit served as a powerful reminder of how profoundly such events affect regions and communities.

The Global Travel Grant made this entire experience possible, and I am deeply thankful to the Seismological Society of America for their support.

Delivered a talk on "Peeling the Layers of Earthquake Risk - Hazards, Exposure, Vulnerability, and Tolerability".

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I delivered a presentation titled “Peeling the Layers of Earthquake Risk: Hazards, Exposure, Vulnerability, and Tolerability” at IIT Bombay and IISc Bangalore during October, 2025. The presentation focused on how risk models often serve as heiristics to guide risk–reduction policy decisions, which makes it especially critical that risk modelers play a larger role in interpreting and communicating results. That responsibility includes clearly explaining model limitations and the challenges of keeping models up to date as knowledge evolves. Ultimately, what constitutes an acceptable or tolerable level of risk is a personal choice that differs for each stakeholder.

The presentation included material that is part of Earthquake Risk Tolerance for Building Codes funded by Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake.

Presented a poster during 2025 Annual Meeting of QuakeCore in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I presented a poster on “Earthquake scenarios and corresponding seismic hazard maps for four locations across Aoteroa New Zealand” during the 2025 Annual Meeting of QUakeCore that was organized in Dunedin, New Zealand during 1-4 September, 2025.

This work is part of the ongoing project Selection of Earthquake Scenarios for Wellington funded by Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake.

Delivered a presentation at the 14th International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability in Los Angeles, USA.

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I presented our work titled “Framework for Selecting Representative Earthquake Scenarios: A Case Study for Wellington, New Zealand” during a session titled “Multi-hazard resilience quantification of community systems for informed mitigation, climate adaptation, and post-event management” during the 14th International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability. This oonference was organized at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles during 1-6 June, 2025.

This work is part of the ongoing project Selection of Earthquake Scenarios for Wellington funded by Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake.

Delivered a talk virtually in the Department of Civi and Environmental Engineering at the Universidad del Bio Bio in Chile

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I delivered a talk virtually titled “The Many Faces of Performance Based Earthquake Engineering” during a class seminar for Professor Marco Gallegos at the Departmento De Ingeneria Civil y Ambiental at the Universidad del Bio Bio in Chile.

Delivered a presentation at the 2025 New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering Annual Technical Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand.

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I presented our ongoing work on “Framework for Selection of Representative Earthquake Scenarios for Wellington”” during a session titled “– Engineering Seismology, Seismic Hazard and Ground Motions” during the 2025 New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering Annual Technical Meeting that was organized in Auckland, New Zealand during 8-11 April, 2025.

This work is part of the ongoing project Selection of Earthquake Scenarios for Wellington funded by Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake.

Received a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I am honored to have received a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship for a proposal titled “Resilience Enhancement through Multi-Hazard Recovery Analysis of Earthquake and Flood-Affected Infrastructure”. I will move to University College London in January 2026 to start this project with Professor Carmine Galasso.

Preetish Kakoty delivered a talk in the Department of Earthquake Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I delivered a talk titled “Seismic Risk Models and Their Role in Shaping Risk Reduction Policies” during a department seminar at the Department of Earthquake Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India.

Participated in a panel discussion during 12th Eastern Himalaya Naturenomics in Guwahati, India

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I participated in a panel discussion on “Livelihood and Sustainable Development Models: In The Context of Eastern Himalaya” during the 12th Eastern Himalayan Naturenomics™ Forum organized by Balipara Foundation in Guwhati, Assam. I shared the risk framework of exposure, hazard, and vulnerability to emphasize on the need for efforts in all the three dimensions to collectively reduce risk for the communities relying on agro-based livelihood in one of the world’s most impacted region due to the changing climate.

Preetish Kakoty co-organized a technical session and presented at the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Milan, Italy

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A busy week in Milan attending the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering.

I presented on “Quantifying Variability in the Collapse Risk of Non-ductile Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall Buildings” in a session titled Seismic Resilience of Aging Communities. This work is part of my PhD project Collapse Risk of Non-Ductile Concrete Shear Wall Buildings.

I also contributed to a paper “Earthquake insurance penetration in India: opportunities and challenges” that was presented by the lead author Pratim Kalita during the conference.

Additionally, I co-organized a session titled Seismic Risk Models for Decision Support: Advancements and Applications hosting ~40 presentations over multiple sessions. This session was co-organized with Tiegan Hobbs (Geological Survey of Canada) and Robert Chase (Lettis Consultants International).