I C U SNewsletter
Volume 15

Number3

Oct. to Dec. 2015

International Center for Urban Safety Engineering
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo

A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW ON THE TWO DECADESOF EARTHQUAKE RISK MANAGEMENT ACTIONS IN NEPAL
Amod Mani DIXIT
Executive Director, National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal, Nepal

Introduction andhistorical background
Nepal faces a multitude of natural
hazards, notably floods, landslides,
earthquakes, cyclonic winds, etc. The
history of Nepal and Kathmandu

Valley is strewn with devastating
earthquake events, at least once
per century that have killed fromkings to the commoners, andcaused tremendous economic andpolitical setbacks to this landlocked
country.
Unfortunately,theOutside of NSET

extremely high earthquake risk is
growing due to continued building
up of vulnerabilities, especially
due to unplanned urbanizationof settlements, despite a glorious
tradition of earthquake-resistantconstruction of monuments andtemples. Lack of systematic hazard
preparedness is another reason ofincreasing social vulnerabilities toearthquakes.
Disaster risk management was
not in active menu in modern Nepal
prior to the devastating 1988 M6.6
Udaypur Earthquake and the 1993
flood in the south-central part ofits territory. Both these events
convinced on the need for adoptingorganized approaches to manage andminimize risks due to natural hazards.
The international environment wasalso favorable: global initiatives
such as the International Decade
fro Natural Disaster Reduction(IDNDR) of 1990-1999, andone of its reverberations, theWorld Seismic Safety Initiative(WSSI), contributed much towards
encouraging and guiding Nepal
towards awareness disaster risk
management practices as one ofits undertakings. The First WSSI
Workshop in Bangkok in 1993 wasof tremendous importance for Nepal– the meeting listened to Nepal’sreport on its efforts in earthquake
risk management by professionals
and decided to support it by holding
a high level meeting (HLM) withgovernment officials and policy
makers in order to influencethem towards greater support
and facilitation of the ongoingnational activities. The Kathmandu
HLM in 1993 was instrumental increating a supportive environment
towards establishment of the
National Society for Earthquake
Technology-Nepal (NSET), a
non-government organization that
focuses on aspects of earthquake
risk management by the joint
efforts of professionals belonging
to the fields of geology, seismology,
earthquake engineering, structural

Page 2engineering, urban planner, building
engineers and architects, and also
economists and journalists. The
HLM facilitated exposure of NSET
to the activities of international
communityandinstitutions,such as International Center for
Disaster-Mitigation
Engineering(INCEDE) of the University of
Tokyo(UTokyo),California
Seismic Safety Commission, andEarthquake Engineering ResearchInstitute (EERI). This exposure
subsequently grew into networking
and ultimately into partnership
relationship. For example, two of
NSET professionals got opportunity
to study and conduct research inthe civil engineering department,
graduate school of UTokyo. This
relationship has now becomesustainable especially after signingof a MOU for collaboration between
NSET and the International Centerfor Urban Safety Engineering(ICUS) of UTokyo. ICUS is themodern incarnation of INCEDE.
In the mean time, the governmentof Nepal developed the national
action plan for submission to the1994 United Nations’ Yokohama
World Conference on Natural
Disaster Reduction, to express
thecountry’s
commitments
towards disaster risk reduction.
NSET became deeply involved insupporting the government of Nepal
in the preparation for the UN World
Conference and also in participatingin the conference. Further, in the 1996
World Conference on Earthquake
Engineering (11WCEE), NSET
joined the International Associationof Earthquake Engineering (IAEE)
as a bona fide member.
Such exposure as well as thenational and international enabling
environment together with the

ICUS Newsletter Vol. 15, No.3

national initiatives became themotivation for NSET to develop i) its
vision of earthquake safety for Nepal,ii) its mission on helping people andthe government in developing andimplementing organized approaches
for earthquake risk management,
and iii) its strategic objectivesof learning modern technologies
globally and indigenous knowledge
locally, adapting it to the presentday needs in the local context,
and implementing risk reduction
initiatives in partnership andcollaboration.
In 1996, NSET consolidated theconcept of the Kathmandu Valley
Earthquake Risk Management
Program (KVERMP), and started
its implementation in collaboration
with the Asian Disaster Preparedness
Centre (ADPC) and GeoHazards
International (GHI) with corefunding support from the US Officeof Foreign Disaster Assistance(US OFDA). This program was amilestone as it undertook several
innovative and successful initiatives.
Subsequent efforts in earthquake
risk management in Nepal waslargely influenced and guided by
KVERMP, and therefore it deserves
to be described in slightly moredetails, as given in the following
sections.
KVERMP:
The milestone program
KVERMP was a milestone
program because of its success, its
innovativeness, and the national
and international endorsement,
acceptance and replication of its
methodologies and outcomes. Someof the innovative works initiatedunder KVERMP by NSET included:
1. Development of earthquake

damage scenario of Kathmandu
Valley using empirical methods
andsecondaryinformation
on earthquake hazards andpast earthquake damage. The
scenario served as the basis fordeveloping an Action Plan for
Earthquake Risk Management(ERM) for Kathmandu Valley.
More than 50 senior government
officials from various ministries
contributed to the formulation of
the plan. Efforts of implementing
the action plan initiatives insubsequent years largely defined
the efforts of ERM in Nepal.
2. Development of a methodology forassessment of the school building
vulnerability leading to thedevelopment of a comprehensive
SchoolEarthquake
SafetyProgram (SESP), The SESP
included seismic retrofittingofexistingweakschoolbuildings, reconstruction ofearthquake-resistantnewschool buildings using local
materials,
improvementofseismic performance of nonstructural elements in schoolbuildings, development of school
earthquake preparedness plan
including emergency evacuationof school children and evacuation
management and earthquake
drills.
In the course of implementing
SESP, NSET could develop
several innovative initiatives
that have become very popularin Nepal and also in the region
beyond the country. These are:a. Training masons, carpenters,
contractors,
supervisors,
engineering technicians, andbuilding design engineers/architects on earthquakeresistant design and code-

complianceconstruction
technology
andseismic
retrofitting.
b. Earthquake awareness programs
targeting teachers, students andcommunity members.
c. School disaster emergency
preparedness and response
planning, such as safe
evacuation drill, first aid, etc.
3. Establishment of the system ofobserving the annual earthquake
safety day, in which thegovernment, the private sector,
the academia and the common
people make collective pledge toreduce earthquake risk.
4. Development of a program andcurriculum for mason training forearthquake resistant construction.
This is necessary to address
the issue of earthquake safetyof building in an environment
where more than 90% of thebuilding stock is constructedat the guidance of the masons,which may not be literate enoughto understand the intricacies ofseismic behaviour of buildings.
5. Development of community-centred
disaster risk management program.
NSET Approaches
Right from the very beginning,
NSET works adopted a preferenceof implementation excellence overtheoretical excellence, and we
ensured that the technologies thatwere easily adopted by the local
masons far outweighed in preferencein comparison to the technologies
that required heavy heterografting.
This efforts on localization of ERM
methodologies resulted in gradualincreasing of involvement of avariety of stakeholders, and a seriesof successful operational approaches

as follows:a. Preferential use of local resources,
local masons, local contractors,
local construction materials andlocal building typologies.
b. Foster
collaboration
andpartnership among governmental
agencies, NGOs, CBOs andbusiness community by involving
them in the decision making at allstages.
c. Follow strict technical andfinancial transparency: be always
ready to answer the following
questions –what is being done,
how and who is doing this, why
it is being done, what time,
technology and resources are
required and how much resourceson what aspect are used.
Other Programs of NSET
KVERMP subsequently encouraged
and provided NSET with motivation
for the design and implementation ofseveral other innovative programs,that NSET has been successfully
implementing them over the years in
Nepal and the South Asian Region.
The main of them include:
1. Municipality earthquake safety
programthat
gradually
metamorphosed into the Building
Code Implementation Program(BCIPN) being successfully
implemented in over 30
municipalities in Nepal.
2. Program for public private
partnershipforearthquake
risk management, by which
the private sector businesses
are made aware on the need toprogress onto business continuity
planning progressing from thecurrent considerations of disastercharity and corporate social
responsibility.

ICUS Newsletter Oct. to Dec. 2015

Page 3

Rescued Victims and Discovered Dead Bodies by Different Search and Rescue (SAR) Teams

3. Community-based
disaster
preparedness
andcapacityenhancement.
4. Building up capacity of national
disaster
response
agencies
in medical first response andcollapsed structure search andrescue (SAR) – the Program for
Enhancement for Emergency
Response (PEER), etc.
The Gorkha Earthquakeof April 2015 tested
NSET efforts
The Mw 7.8 Gorkha Earthquake
and its four major aftershocks
resulted in 9,256 human death,
22,326 injury, and inflicted damage
to the extent of reconstruction of
about 850,000 houses, and lossof assets over several billion US
dollars (MoHA-GoN, 2015). The
earthquake has also inflicted social,economical and psychologicalstressors to the people andgovernment of Nepal.
In this condition of immense
shock, we are proud at the positive
impact of the earthquake risk
management efforts implemented
by NSET and the efficacy ofPage 4the approaches, philosophy andmethodologies adopted in Nepal in
the past 22 years.
The followings provide a few ofthe success cases.
Retrofitted buildings performed
excellent: All the 290 schools thatwere retrofitted and seismicallyreconstructed performed very wellduring 25 April earthquake anda series of aftershocks: no deathor injury reported, no serious
damage, and no collapse of any ofsuch retrofitted school buildings,
including those located in epicenter
areas. Almost all of the retrofitted
school buildings were usedduring the earthquake response
as emergency shelter, warehouse,
health posts, or as safe offices.
This contrasted sharply with poor
performance of the “un-retrofitted”
school buildings, including thoselocated nearby the retrofitted ones,
during the Gorkha earthquake:about 80% of the “un-retrofitted”
were damaged beyond repair.
Investment in PEER andCommunity Level Emergency
Response Capacity Enhancement
Paid Off: The 15-year old PEER
investment justified the investment -ICUS Newsletter Vol. 15, No.3

the national capacity developed andthe national discourse of emergency
preparedness were very handy,
albeit “not enough,” for responding
the situation.
The performance of the national
responder, notwithstanding the
problems of logistics, was superb.
The figure above shows the efficiencyof the national responders. Had thesame level of earthquake happeneda decade earlier, the performanceof SAR could have been much lesseffective.
The Gorkha Earthquake once
again revealed the importance andusefulness of community SAR
volunteer responders. It was clearthat community volunteers arein fact the first responders, andthat they need to be trained in the
training programs listed above
together with the training of First
Aid. Additionally, the earthquake
also revealed the need to train
security forces from the private
sectors including those from tourism
and travel business, industry, hotels,
river rafting etc. – a learning that
NSET has been propagating since
two decades.

14th USMCA in Nepal
By Dr. Ramesh Guragain, NSET, Nepal

The 14th International Symposium
on New Technologies for Urban
Safety of Mega Cities in Asia
(USMCA 2015) was commenced on
29-31 October 2015 in Kathmandu,
Nepal. Honorable Minister Mr. Som
Prasad Pandey, Ministry of Industry,
Nepal Government inaugurated
together with inaugural remarks.
The overall objective of thesymposium is to share experiences
on urban safety and environmental
management across the countries in
the world and to organize interactionof scientists, researchers, academics
and decision makers from different
countries.
Total of seven keynote presentations
and 80 papers on various areas andthemes were presented in threeplenary and eight parallel sessions.
Around 100 international participants
and more than a hundred Nepali
participants actively engaged in thisscientific discourse. Further, different
professionalorganizations
andbusinesses demonstrated their workand products through 12 different

booths. Young researchers withexcellent presentation were awarded
with Excellent Young ResearcherAward.
The symposium was jointly
organized by National Society for
Earthquake
Technology-Nepal(NSET) and International Center for
Urban Safety Engineering (ICUS),
Institute of Industrial Science (IIS),
the University of Tokyo (UTokyo),
Japan in association with number ofother partner organizations.

USMCA2015 Participants

Left: Honorable Minister of Industry, the Government of Nepal
Inaugurating the Symposium by Lightening the Traditional Lamp
Right: Prof. Kimiro Meguro Co-convener of the symposium withHonorable Minister of Industry, The Government of Nepal Mr. Som
Prasads Pandey and His Excellency the Japanese Ambassador to
Nepal, Mr. Masashi, Ogawa

Left: High-level Dignitaries during Opening Ceremony
Right: Dr. Amod Mani Dixit, Co-Convener of the Symposium
Presenting Excellent Young Researcher Award to Mr. K. Yamamoto,
PhD Candidate, UTokyoYTU delegates visit Tokyo
for the first Myanmar-Japan Joint Meeting
Prof. Khin Than Yu, YTU, Myamu

We visited Tokyo from 9 - 15
November 2015 for the first MyanmarJapan Joint Meeting (MJJM) of the
SATREPS project. Delegates from
Myanmar were Prof. Nyi Hla Nge,a chairman of a steering committee
for Yangon Technological University(YTU) and Mandalay Technological
University (MTU), Prof. Aye Myint,
Rector of YTU, Dr. Win Win
Zin, Associate Professor from the
Department of Civil Engineering,YTU and myself Prof. Khin Than Yu,
Pro-Rector of YTU.

The main purpose of the visit
was to meet and discuss face to face
together with the project leaders fromboth Myanmar and Japan. All leadersfrom the Japanese SATREPS projectgroups as well as officers from JST
and JICA, our sponsors, participated in

ICUS Newsletter Oct. to Dec. 2015

Page 5the two-day meeting and it was a good
opportunity after eight months since
the start of the project to confirm the
project progress, discuss managerial
issues, make adjustment as necessary
and finally to build consensus andagree on Action Plan which wasdrafted at the end of the meeting.
At IIS, we visited their researchand experimental facilities such
as Intelligent Transport System(ITS) Center, Earthquake Resistant
Structure (ERS) facility, Kuwano

vizit to Meguro Lab. at IIS

meeting among members

Laboratory and Nagai Laboratory.
Also we took the day trip to Tsukuba
to visit National Research Institutefor Earth Science and Disaster
Prevention, Public Works ResearchInstitute/ICHARM and Nippon
Kohei Research and Development
Center for observing their laboratory
facilities. We also made a half-day
visit to Metropolitan Expressway
Company Ltd.
This trip made us realize how
important disaster reduction preparation
is to become a disaster resilient society
and how wide and intense its spectrum
is. There may be some unavoidable
difficulties on the way to disaster
resilient society. Experience during
this trip encouraged us to run into
those difficulties on our way.

Members of SATREPS-Myanmer

The 6th ICSE 2015 in Yangon
By T. Matsushita

The 6th International Conference
on Science and Engineering (ICSE)
was held on 12–13 December 2015
at Yangon Technological University(YTU) in Yangon, Myanmar. The
two-day conference was organized by
YTU, sponsored by JICA and covered
six categories of studies that werecarried out in seven parallel sessions,with 183 participants. There were
165 presentations including manyfrom YTU, Mandalay Technological
University (MTU), other Myanmar
universities and Japanese universities.
Majority of the entries were from thefield of Electrical and Electronics(48) and Energy, Environment andGroup photo of ICSE keypersons

Page 6Natural Sciences (45), substantial
number of entries were from ICT (25)and Manufacturing and Automation(24) and some from Natural Disaster
Management (11) and Infrastructure(12).
Sixteen researchers andmembers from SATREPS project
team have participated in theconference and five of them gave
presentations. Dr. Wataru Takeuchi
was invited to give a keynote
speech and presented his progress in
SATREPS project in the field of GIS/
RS, titled “Estimation of Land Use
Change and Building Heights from1966 to 2013 in Yangon by Corona,Landsat and Geoeye Images.” Prof.
Takehiko Kitamori, a former vicePresident of the University of Tokyoalso gave a lecture about international
collaboration in the academia
titled “International Cooperationin University Education in the Eraof Knowledge Based Economy.”
SATREPS project leader, Prof. Kimiro
Meguro has introduced about the

ICUS Newsletter Vol. 15, No.3

exhibition booth

SATREPS project and Prof. Osamu
Murao and Dr. Akiyuki Kawasakipresented about the research progressof their project groups, respectively.
The ground floor exhibition area
was filled with many booths fromvarious industries and it was lively
with TV camera crews interviewing
the participants. The conference
was filled with researchers fromuniversities across Myanmar andwas successful in providing a great
opportunity for researchers to present
their works as well as learn fromothers and exchange information
among the participants.

Tsinghua Univ. delegates visit ICUS
Prof. Hong Huang, Tsinaghua Univirsity, china

Based on the international
investigation requirement of the
project on the Development Strategy
of National Public Safety Scienceand Technology supported by
Chinese Academy of Engineering,
the project members visited Japanfor investigation led by the project
leader, Prof. Weicheng Fan (Directorof Institute of Public Safety Research,
Tsinghua University) from October
12 to 16, 2015, The visit was kindly
cooperated by Prof. Kimiro Meguro,
Dicector of ICUS and other ICUS
members. During this trip, themembers visited Kanto Regional
Development Bureau of Japan, Fireand Disaster Management Agencyof Japan; National Research Institutefor Earth and Science and Disaster
Prevention and ICUS. The members
also attended RISCON (the Security& Safety Trade Expo 2015). The
members discussed recent progresson the studies on urban and public
safety with many researchers. It isshown that the science and technology
are paid great attention for disasterprevention and reduction in Japan.
For example, large scale experimentand simulation facilities are wellestablished and used, the emergency
management industry are welldeveloped, the education of national
personnel in disaster prevention
and reduction is widely conducted.
The visit provided an excellent
opportunity to further enhance ourmutual understanding and to set thefoundation for future collaborationand partnership on public safety andemergency management between
China and Japan.

Chiba Experiment Station Open House
Dr. H. Gokon

The Annual Open Campus washeld in Chiba Experiment Station of
IIS on November 13th, 2015. Totally,

21 topics were exhibited in the
Annual Open Campus, which wererelated to architecture, transportation,

special lectures at seminar room

The primary school students visit theexperiment station

civil engineering, information andcommunications and so on. In theafternoon, Special lectures were
given by Professor Subhransu Roy,the head of Center for Railway
Research of the Indian Institute ofTechnology Kharagpur, India and
Dr. Yutaka Takahashi, Professor
Emeritus of the Who was the 2015
Japan Prize. The Open House was
successfully finished.

CODE2015
Dr. H. Gokon

The 3rd International Conference
on Computational Design in
Engineering (CODE2015) was
held from December 14th to 15th,
2015, at the Institute of Industrial
Science, The University of Tokyo,
Japan, hosted by the International
Center for Urban Safety Engineering(ICUS) and organized by the Local
Organizing Committee of CODE
2015. Totally, 6 keynote speeches
and 75 presentations were given by
the participants. A lot of valuable

CODE 2015 Participants

research results were presented in
the session, and the participants

communicated with each other in theactive discussion.

ICUS Newsletter Oct. to Dec. 2015

Page 7

Editor’s note…

It is almost six years since I havebecome a member of ICUS. During
this time, I have been given theopportunities to carry out research
activities and collaborations in close
connection with many different
countries in Asia.
My regular research activities wereconcerned more with national issues
than international, and concentrate
on realizing applicable solutions forthese issues. However, through theinternational experiences provided
by ICUS, my abilities to sharply
assess the problems and consider
them through multiple perspectives

have been fostered.
At the same time, these experiences
have also led me to re-consider
the ‘advancement’ of Japan. The
commonly understood fact thatJapan is always ahead of rest of Asia
is no longer true. In terms of thewill to carry forward an innovation;
the ability to think outside thebox; engaging in cross-sectoralcollaborations; and investing invarious funds and grants, I even feelthat Japan is lagging behind. Japanis good at presenting an excellent
vision; however, realization of thevision includes various societal
obstacles which are difficult toovercome. These obstacles are
not due to technical problems but
rather because of societal problems
including policies and systematic
issues. Therefore, we also need toconsider the possibilities of realizing
the solutions in some Asian country
first, through collaboration research,and then importing it back to Japanas a new model.
Throughtheinternational
collaborative work at ICUS, I hope
to continue to build a model whichallows for progress through themutual stimulation and growth of allparties involved.
by T. Kato

International Center for Urban Safety Engineering (ICUS)
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
Tel: (+81-3) 5452-6472, Fax: (+81-3) 5452-6476
http://icus.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp

The International Center for Urban Safety Engineering (ICUS) is a research
center located at the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo.
The purpose of ICUS is to identify, investigate, and resolve issues towards therealization of sustainable urban systems for the prosperity and safety of society
considering challenging socio-economic problems.