Inventories of seismically induced landslides provide essential information about the extent and severity of ground effects after an earthquake. Rigorous assessment of the completeness of a landslide inventory and the quality of a landslide susceptibility map derived from the inventory is of paramount importance for disaster management applications. Methods and materials applied while preparing inventories influence their quality, but the criteria for generating an inventory are not standardized. This study considered five landslide inventories prepared by different authors after the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, to assess their differences, understand the implications of their use in producing landslide susceptibility maps in conjunction with standard landslide predisposing factors and logistic regression. We adopted three assessment criteria: (1) an error index to identify the mutual mismatches between the inventories; (2) statistical analysis, to study the inconsistency in predisposing factors and performance of susceptibility maps; and (3) geospatial analysis, to assess differences between the inventories and the corresponding susceptibility maps. Results show that substantial discrepancies exist among the mapped landslides. Although there is no distinct variation in the significance of landslide causative factors and the performance of susceptibility maps, a hot spot analysis and cluster/outlier analysis of the maps revealed notable differences in spatial patterns. The percentages of landslide-prone hot spots and clustered areas are directly proportional to the size of the landslide inventory. The proposed geospatial approaches provide a new perspective to the investigators for the quantitative analysis of earthquake-triggered landslide inventories and susceptibility maps.

The Gorkha earthquake on April 25, 2015 had significantly affected the livelihood of people and the overall economy in Nepal. The earthquake had caused damage to about half a million private and public buildings, apart from damage to other infrastructures including schools, hospitals, roads, hydropower, irrigation canals, etc. The earthquake had affected the lives of 8 million people. With significant numbers of actors and stakeholders involved in the reconstruction process, no significant relief has reached the ground or is observable even after 3 years of the disaster. The government has formed National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) as the focal authority for the reconstruction process which is leading the reconstruction process with line agencies and other stakeholders. The longitudinal study was carried out through semi-structured interviews with the engineers working under NRA, local people and social mobilizer, group discussions, and field observation from June 2015 to August 2016 focusing on challenges for timely and quality reconstruction. The research also reviews the experiences from past events in similar social and political condition. This study concludes that the situation was the result of larger institutional gaps as the absence of local government, lack of coordination, bureaucratic hurdles and political transition, weak governance and cross-cutting issues as accessibility, manpower shortage, knowledge gap and other socio-cultural aspects. Authors supplement that the good governance and strategic incorporation of social and cultural aspects of reconstructions along with the technical cross-cutting issues like skilled labour, resources availability and construction knowledge could help to expedite the reconstruction process.

The Gorkha earthquake on April 25, 2015 has significantly affected the livelihood of people and overall economy in Nepal, causing severe damage and destruction in central Nepal including nation's capital. 800 thousand buildings were affected leaving 8 million people homeless. Challenge of reconstruction of optimum 800 thousand houses is arduous for Nepal Government in background of its turmoil political scenario and weak governance apart from its difficult geographical terrain. Albeit, with significant number of stakeholders involved in the reconstruction process, no appreciable progress has seen to the ground till date, which is reflected over the frustration of affected people. In order to identify factors hindering timely and quality reconstruction, this research has brought basic arguments and ideas prospected by different actors involved in the process. Methodology of the study is comprised with semi structured interviews with social mobilizers, engineers working in the field, and affected people, group discussion, field observations and regular follow-up of the incidents through national newspapers and discussion forums. This study concludes that inaccessibility, absence of local government, weak governance, weak infrastructures, lack of preparedness, knowledge gap and manpower shortage etc. are the key challenges of the reconstruction after 2015 earthquake in Nepal. Good governance, integrated information, addressing technical issues, public participation along with short term and long term strategies to tackle with technical issues are highlighted as some imperative factors for timely and quality reconstruction in context of Nepal.Journal of the Institute of Engineering, 2018, 14(1): 52-63

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