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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Sean WilkinsonORCiD, Dr Sarah Dunn
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© The 17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering. Many schools in rural Nepal were damaged or destroyed in the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, highlighting major vulnerabilities in Nepal’s school infrastructure. Schools are particularly important within these communities, so it is vital that facilities are constructed well, to improve their resilience. There are examples of good school reconstruction within Kathmandu and in more remote areas. However, this good practice is limited, and there is much greater scope for better knowledge transfer between stakeholders at different levels within the process. There are also a wide range of challenges affecting construction in different locations and contexts. These challenges, identified in earlier stages of the research, include issues with the availability and quality of construction materials and labour, as well as a complex government approvals process, and limited accessibility of many school sites. This project seeks to identify pockets of good practice that have been implemented within school reconstruction projects, to overcome or mitigate these challenges. In this paper we present some of the results of interviews with stakeholders involved in Nepal’s rural school reconstruction efforts. Examples of good practice have been identified, for rural case study schools, and from experience of implementing school reconstruction projects on a wider scale. This good practice covers a variety of facets of project delivery, including suitability of different construction materials, training and enterprise schemes for labourers, coordination and allocation of projects to allow more effective material distribution and project supervision, and utilizing opportunities for improving facilities through reconstruction efforts and we present details of one of these. These findings will feed into guidance and decision-making tools that will be produced within the research. The aim is for these tools to be able to inform how the lessons learnt could be applied to projects in similar locations or contexts, or how they could be adapted to be made suitable for other areas. These tools will be disseminated to stakeholders, in order to be used to assist in implementing ongoing school reconstruction and upgrade work across rural Nepal. These would help to improve the overall efficiency and efficacy of school reconstruction project delivery, and work towards Nepal’s wider ‘Build Back Better’ efforts, in line with the Sendai Framework objectives, to see improved resilience against future disasters.
Author(s): Westoby L, Wilkinson S, Dunn S
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: 17th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (17WCEE)
Year of Conference: 2020
Online publication date: 18/09/2020
Acceptance date: 02/04/2018
ISSN: 3006-5933
Publisher: International Association for Earthquake Engineering
URL: https://proceedings-wcee.org/view.html?id=22218&conference=17WCEE
Series Title: World Conference on Earthquake Engineering proceedings
