Haresh Shah Receives 2011 Chaudhuri Award

This year the Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri Award for Distinguished Service is being awarded to Professor Haresh C. Shah. Shah is the Obayashi Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and chaired the Department of Civil Engineering there before his retirement. He is one of the leading scientists in the world in the fields of earthquake engineering, risk analysis, and probabilistic methods. “Professor Shah is an eminent scholar and a humanitarian whose work is having positive impacts globally in many areas, and we are proud to honor him with this year’s Chaudhuri Award,” says CIIS President Joseph L. Subbiondo.

In 1992 Shah helped found and served as the first chair of the World Seismic Safety Initiative (WSSI), an organization of scholars in the field of earthquake engineering who wanted to go beyond mere research to take concrete steps to help those affected by earthquakes. “In every disaster,” says Shah, “it’s the poor who suffer the most.” WSSI volunteers go into countries that do not have a sufficient number of seismic engineers, or building codes appropriate to the risk of earthquakes. The volunteers help set up educational institutions and policies to meet those needs.

“The country of Myanmar [Burma] is a prime example of what WSSI can do,” Shah recounts. “The government ruled by edict that the country had no earthquakes, despite scientific evidence. When WSSI went there, the leaders told us to leave. Then Myanmar had an earthquake that damaged some pagodas, and the government called us back. Since the mid-1990s we have developed academic programs in earthquake engineering there, and a building code that 
uses local materials. They now have state-of-
the-art seismic instruments, connected to the global network.”

In 1989 Professor Shah also started a company called RMS (Risk Management Solutions, Inc.) that creates software to help mitigate the risks of low probability but high consequence events, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and typhoons. Hemant Shah, son of Professor Shah, is the president and CEO of RMS. The company now has offices worldwide and more than 2,000 employees.

Shah’s current interest is in micro-insurance, in this case, insurance for small farmers whose business is not large enough to qualify for any of the products offered by commercial insurance companies. “We are working now with various governments, including India and China, to develop drought- and flood-based micro-insurance for farmers. If something terrible occurs, the farmers are made whole.” The program is already working in such locations as Andhra Pradesh state in India. “Micro-insurance has had an unexpected consequence there,” Shah describes. “A rice farmer is paid no matter whether the crop is damaged by disaster. If a farmer knows that he will not suffer from a catastrophe, he becomes more entrepreneurial and innovative in his practices. Production goes up.”
One interesting coincidence in Professor Shah receiving the Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri Award 
is that he was personally acquainted with the prize’s namesakes, the founders of CIIS. Describing the Chaudhuris, Shah recalls that “They were a couple who were intellectually very powerful and very much involved. They believed deeply in their convictions.”

Haresh Shah was born in India in the town of Godhra in the state of Gujarat. He grew up in Pune (formerly Poona) in the state of Maharashtra.
Haresh Shah receives the Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri Award at a ceremony on May 7, 2011 at the Crowne Plaza Cabana Hotel in Palo Alto.