Citation on the award of NZSEE Fellow, April 2019
Jitendra Bothara is awarded a Fellowship of NZSEE for his contribution to earthquake engineering research in New Zealand.
Jitendra Bothara has been a passionate and dedicated earthquake engineer for more than two decades; and his contribution to earthquake engineering over these years has been extensive and of high quality.
Jitendra was a leading contributor in the development of the World Housing Encyclopedia published by EERI (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute) in 2011. He co-authored the chapter on “Improving the Seismic Performance of Stone Masonry Buildings” which is used worldwide. Over the years, his extensive research works on seismic assessment and retrofitting of unreinforced masonry buildings have benefitted thousands of engineers throughout the world where these buildings are very common. Jitendra has disseminated his findings on seismic strengthening of adobe and stone masonry buildings in several countries including Nepal, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Iran.
In New Zealand, Jitendra has been actively contributing to the NZSEE missions and visions since he migrated to NZ. He was a member of the NZSEE management committee for several years in the 2000s, and also helped in organising past NZSEE conferences. In addition, Jitendra has also been a member of the editorial board of the NZSEE Bulletin for the last 5 years. Following the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes, Jitendra volunteered his time and expertise and led the damage assessment teams for multiple buildings.
Jitendra played a key role in writing the 2006 NZSEE Seismic Assessment guidelines and he was also a member of the working group writing the 2017 MBIE/NZSEE seismic assessment guideline, in which he led the URM buildings chapter and made significant contributions towards the general methodology and concrete buildings chapters. Jitendra has also contributed to education and upskilling of NZ earthquake engineers through multiple IPENZ/NZSEE Earthquake Engineering seminar series.
Jitendra was part of the NZSEE missions to Indonesia after the 2009 Padang Earthquake and Nepal after the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, to provided assessment of buildings including masonry structures, and also took part in disseminating the learnings from these missions through public reports and seminars.
Jitendra’s contribution and leadership in the seismic assessment of existing buildings, improvement of masonry building performance during earthquakes, and earthquake engineering in New Zealand is appreciated by the Society, and is acknowledged with the award of a New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Fellowship.
