The 2015 Gorkha Nepal Earthquake: Insights from Earthquake Damage Survey
ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 22 June 2015 doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2015.00008 The 2015 Gorkha Nepal earthquake: insights from earthquake damage survey Katsuichiro Goda1*, Takashi Kiyota2, Rama Mohan Pokhrel2, Gabriele Chiaro2, Toshihiko Katagiri 2, Keshab Sharma3 and Sean Wilkinson4 1 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK, 2 Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, 3 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, 4 School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK The 2015 Gorkha Nepal earthquake caused tremendous damage and loss. To gain valuable lessons from this tragic event, an earthquake damage investigation team was dispatched to Nepal from 1 May 2015 to 7 May 2015. A unique aspect of the earthquake damage investigation is that first-hand earthquake damage data were obtained 6–11 days after the mainshock. To gain deeper understanding of the observed earthquake damage Edited by: in Nepal, the paper reviews the seismotectonic setting and regional seismicity in Nepal Solomon Tesfamariam, The University of British Columbia, and analyzes available aftershock data and ground motion data. The earthquake damage Canada observations indicate that the majority of the damaged buildings were stone/brick masonry Reviewed by: structures with no seismic detailing, whereas the most of RC buildings were undamaged. Vladimir Sokolov, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, This indicates that adequate structural design is the key to reduce the earthquake risk in Germany Nepal. To share the gathered damage data widely, the collected damage data (geo-tagged Takeshi Koike, photos and observation comments) are organized using Google Earth and the kmz file Kyoto University, Japan is made publicly available.
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