Delhi Metro civil structures including the Metro stations, viaducts and underground tunnels have been well built with sufficient strength to endure maximum stress and strain in case of any eventuality like earthquake.

DMRC has followed the Indian Railway Standards (IRS), Indian Road Congress (IRC), Indian Standards (IS) and other international standards and codes from countries which are highly earthquake prone. The Delhi Metro structures in the capital have thus been designed in such a manner that they can withstand earthquake forces likely to occur in Zone 4 of the seismic zones identified in India.

Zone 4 is called the High Damage Risk Zone and covers areas of the Indo-Gangetic basin and the capital of the country (Delhi), Jammu and Bihar. This zone is prone for earthquakes of Richter scale 7 to 7.5. This implies that the Delhi Metro structures can withstand earthquake tremors of 7.5 Richter magnitude.

The design of the structures of the Delhi Metro posed a number of engineering challenges for the Metro Engineers especially in the underground sections as there were no Indian codes available for designing underground civil structures to withstand earthquakes. The DMRC, therefore, had to follow the British Standard codes and European codes and literatures for elevated and underground structures.

The DMRC has adopted additional measures to avoid any disaster in the underground section. An earthquake sensor has been installed at Patel Chowk underground Metro Station of Line-2 (Jahangirpuri – HUDA City Centre) to measure tremors.

Earth Quake sensor installed at Patel Chowk Metro station

This sensor sounds an alarm whenever there’s any vibration of specified magnitude set as trigger value inside the surface which has been designed for alerting the Metro staff and Operation Control Centre (OCC) of the DMRC. This sound alarm is generated automatically whenever it measures vibrations equivalent to 5 Richter or more which becomes an advance warning system for all Metro Train Operators.

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