Sachidanand Joshi

One of the most important lessons that a Mentor needs to inculcate in his mentees is the Art of keeping the mind open to new ideas and thoughts. Listening is essential for this to happen. Research progresses when the mind of the researchers is open to new ideas. Sustainability of efforts is the next step. If one needs to move to next level, the key lies in knowledge base with open mind and sustained, consistent efforts.

Redundancy and robustness are essential. Most existing bridges also have distress. With the increasing severity and frequency of natural hazards, forces are exponentially higher. How deteriorated bridges will perform under such increased loading is the unknown territory. Our research is aimed to determine the level of resilience in bridges under increasing forces of natural hazards. It is required by rescue and relief agencies to decide which is the safest, fastest and assured route that will reach their personal to the impact zone within the golden hour. This will result in avoidance of the natural hazards occurence becoming a Disaster and calamity. More such research is needed.

The second stage of any research after study of historical data narrative is complete, is to perform EDA. Assuming realistic scenarios that have historically correlation enable the researchers to conduct EDA. This analysis is essential to determine how future scenario will emerge from the present state. Benchmark is established from historical movements and deviations. EDA helps researchers to plan for eventual future emerging trends. This plays a very important role when the research objectives are to determine the level of safety. In such studies, wrong interpretation could lead to life threatening scenarios.

Time series data is crucial for evaluation process. The quality of the series decide your decisions. To ensure quality, if the broad range values are known, it is essential to check for any non uniform values. Before accepting such out of range values, a check into the circumstances for that occurence ensures consistency in time series data is ensured. Data collection need to be as per SOP. Statistical analysis of time series data of previous years ensures proper selection of value range. Historical data narrative teaches researchers very valuable lessons about the proposed time series data expected. Similarities in historical narrative enable researchers to determine and understand the statistical deviation that can occur in future.

My past experience of over 40 years of management and creating new teams of engineers has been guided by the principle of faith. A new engineer is as innovative, creative as his boss allows him/ her to be. A senior experienced engineer can bring value to the company as much as his / her boss gives value. A junior management member blooms within the limits boss allows. Irrespective of the experience, seniority; freedom to perform can allow application of engineering judgement to come from within the Engineers. Freedom is absolutely important to allow the junior to grow up with confidence. Faith & Responsibility begets performance. Performance requires conducive atmosphere guided by clarity of objectives, directions and assistance.