Reconstruction of infrastructure (hospitals and schools) after 2015 Gorkha earthquake on the perspective of build back better
Diwat Kumar Shrestha
From the Gorkha Earthquake 25 April 2015 in Nepal; 14 districts are highly affected and 17 districts are moderately affected by the assessment of loss of lives and damages of infrastructures. Total 793 and 946 health facilities are affected in highly earthquake affected 14 districts and moderately earthquake affected 17 districts respectively. Among them 375 completely and 310 partially damaged in 14 districts and 71 completely and 371 partially damaged in 17 districts. Due to organizational instability the reconstruction of health facilities are very discouraging by the progress of 11.48 %.
Likewise, 88.80% education sector infrastructures were totally damaged in entire 31 districts. 8242 community (public) schools with 25134 classrooms have been fully destroyed and 22097 partially destroyed. Due to not frequent change in leadership, stability in policy, commitment of donors, and experienced and dedicated consultants and contractors, the progress of school sector reconstruction is about 70%, which is very encouraging. This is one of the best achievers among the projects in Nepal.
Lack of financial and human resources, sometimes scarcity of construction materials, transportation problems due to bad road assess, resource lacking for monitoring, improper work of some SMCs and NGOs, land problems in some schools and reconstruction in ‘no road facilities area’ are the challenges in school reconstruction.
Schools and hospitals are the place of higher public flows in comparison of other public places. Schools are the places where the innocent children are learning their future direction and in hospitals, patients with inability stay for the regeneration of their lives. Disasters can affect more in these types of public places. So that, the structures of schools and health facilities should be more stronger and disasters resistance to save the lives of people. ‘Build Back Better’ concept has been followed in each sector of reconstruction.
Disasters Risk Management (DRM) is another part of life saving elements in schools and hospitals, so we have to train them about DRM activities. Likewise, in hospitals also the patients and their helpers need to know about DRM plan of their hospitals. There Nepal government education sector policies and plan cover mainly 3 components of education sector (Safe Learning Facilities, Disasters Risk Reduction and Resilience Education and School Disasters Management). Effective implementation and dissemination of related policy and plan in education and health sector is needed. These types of policy and plan should be properly disseminated and it should not be limited to a paper documents.
Development of flood early warning system to inform the risk
Rajendra Sharma
Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Kathmandu, Nepal
Floods are the most widespread climate-related hazards in the world, and they impact more people globally than any other type of natural disaster. It causes over one third of the total economic loss from natural catastrophes and is responsible for two thirds of people affected by natural disasters. An end-to-end flood information system is required for timely flood warning and response. The real-time flood early warning system plays a crucial role in reducing the loss of lives and properties and in overall development of the basin. Early warning systems (EWS) are recognized as an important element of disaster risk reduction and hence to the achievement of sustainable development. This paper outlines the status of EWS in Nepal, the applicability and effectiveness of the real time data to flood early warning in Nepal.
Key words: floods, monitoring, real-time data, warning level, danger level
Reconstruction of government buildings and critical facilities after 2015 Gorkha Earthquake
J.S. Vishokarma1, B.K. Gautam2, J.R. Joshi3
1Central Level Project Implementation Unit (Building), National Reconstruction Authority, jhappersvk@yahoo.co.uk
2Central Level Project Implementation Unit (Building), National Reconstruction Authority, me@engineerbipin.com.np
3Central Level Project Implementation Unit (Building), National Reconstruction Authority, janakjosie@gmail.com
The damage and loss due to Gorkha earthquake of 7.6 Magnitude of 25th April,2015, followed by numerous aftershocks including 6.8 Magnitude struck 17 days after the first big shock was worth of US$7,065 million, 8,790 casualties and 22,300 injuries. Due to the earthquake, 483 central and district government buildings were damaged, out of which 230 were completely collapsed and 253 offices were partially damaged. The reconstruction cost was estimated approximately NRs 29,778 million. After the Federal Governance System in the Country, out of 230 completely collapsed office buildings only 162 need to be reconstructed including all the partially collapsed buildings need to be repaired. Additional ten buildings including Singha Durbar, Shital Niwas, Keishar Mahal, Babar Mahal and other historic buildings, which were partially damaged during earthquake, were needed for retrofitting to make them resilient in future large earthquake.
The responsibility of reconstruction, repair and retrofitting of all the damaged buildings was given to Central Level Project Implementation Unit (Building) under National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). Till now, all 253 partially damaged buildings were repaired, 110 office buildings were already reconstructed and 120 building are in the process of reconstruction. Seismic retrofitting of two government buildings were already completed and others are in the process of retrofitting. Beside these, 643 health facility buildings out of 1197 damaged buildings were already reconstructed and the remaining are in the process of reconstruction.
It is planned to accomplish the reconstruction of remaining buildings within the tenure of NRA, possibly by the end of F.Y.2078/79. The reconstruction is running in its fourth annual and the reconstruction progress of government buildings has been found in quite satisfactory condition.
Keywords: Reconstruction, Government, Building, Retrofitting
Towards Community Resilience through Building Code Implementation
National Society for Earthquake Technology
Lalitpur, Nepal
Damage and collapse of buildings are the most significant cause of death and injury during earthquakes in developing countries. Therefore, ensuring safety of buildings is the main strategy for reducing the earthquake risks of communities, and this will lead towards the resilience of communities. Effective implementation of building code is needed to ensure safer construction. Realizing this critical role of building code implementation, NSET has been supporting several municipalities in Nepal to implement the building code.
NSET developed its strategy for building code implementation based on earlier experience of assisting a few municipalities such as Lalitpur, Dharan and Vyas and also based on the findings of detailed survey in terms of existing building typologies and building construction process, urbanization intensity and demand for engineering services, human resources available with the municipalities and their institutional capacity, status of earthquake risk perception as well as knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) among the municipal population. NSET developed a three-pronged strategy for building code implementation that focused on assisting municipalities enhance capacities in: a) awareness and risk communication, b) technical and institutional services, and c) policy improvements for institutionalizing the process. The target stakeholders and appropriate resources were also identified and the indicators to gauge the effectiveness of the strategy were defined and adopted.
Together, NSET and several leading municipalities championed three directions, awareness raising among residents for creating a demand for increased safety, a simultaneous focus on capacity building, both human resources and institutional structure, and development of municipal procedures and related policies. These created an enabling environment for engaging different stakeholders in discourse on implementation of the code. Further, collaboration among stakeholders involved in the process helped in sustainability of work and knowledge transfer among the stakeholders to identify the problems, bridging the gaps for potential future success.
Earthquake awareness initiatives and methods were developed and implemented differently for the various specific target groups such as social leaders, community groups, house owners and mothers’ groups. As a part of the strategy, clear outcome and impact level achievement indicators were set to make the monitoring and evaluation system more objective and an overarching target of full code compliance in a minimum of 70% of new buildings in program municipalities was established.
The organized approaches, coordinated implementation of actions, and clearly defined monitoring targets helped to achieve a compliance level of more than 74% in new construction of buildings in several municipalities where NSET assisted in building code implementation.
Safety Considerations to Mitigate Disaster Risks in Hydropower Development of Nepal
Subas C. Sunuwar
Heavy rains, global warming and seismic events induce the majority of disaster risks such as landslide, flood, GLOF and other mass wasting events. Hydropower structures are mostly built in mountainous terrains along the banks of river by constructing underground openings and excavating hill slope. Therefore mostly surface structures such as dam, settling basin, waterways, penstock and powerhouse are prone to disaster risks. Similarly construction induced risks such as over break, rock squeezing and water ingress are more common during construction of underground structures in rock mass having shear/weak zones, weathered/heavily jointed rock mass with high in situ stress and ground water.
Disaster risks will damage hydropower’s structures, loss of life and offset the construction schedule resulting causing substantial increase in the cost of the project. Recent examples can be considered from:
- massive cost and time to rebuild damaged surface structures in headworks and powerhouse of running 45 MW Bhote Koshi Power plant by July 2016 GLOF (Fig. 1),
- huge expanses to rebuild severely damaged penstock pipe of running 45 MW Bhote Koshi Project, 9.6 MW Sipring Project and 5 MW Mailung Project (Fig. 1) by rock falls induced by 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, and
- additional cost incurred for rehabilitation of inundated power house of operating 2 MW Sunkoshi Hydropower plant and damaged barrage of operating 22 MW Sunkoshi Hydroelectric Plant by 2014 Jure Rock slide induced disaster risks.
Disaster risks can be predicted and minimized if disaster risks assessment process and safety measures are considered from the beginning. Disaster risks assessment process includes identification by site investigations, construction of geological model and prediction of risks whereas safety consideration process includes design considerations to mitigate the predicted risks. Therefore, Disaster risks assessment and safety consierations are the key for successful development of hydropower projects.
Figure 1: Example of Disaster risks: Dam and penstock pipe damaged by GLOF and rock falls.
