Schools are the gathering place of the young generation. They are expected to act as a refuge after an earthquake. Even though Nepal has no building supervision system, the quality of school buildings receives necessary attention. During a field study conducted in mid-June, we summarised the seismic damage to 12 schools with various types of structures, including local characteristic reinforced concrete frames, cement-bonded or mud-bonded masonry and timber frames. The pros and cons of local construction technologies are discussed. Some interesting earthquake phenomena, such as the effects of forward directivity, site configuration, earthquake sequence and safe distance from a slope, are discussed. The geo-security evaluation of a proposed school site in mountainous Baramchi is also conducted.

Bridge deflection is a significant index reflecting the rigidity, overall stability, carrying capacity, and seismic performance of bridge structures. However, it is difficult to measure accurately, particularly for large-span bridges with complex deflection curves. Inclinometers are tentatively used in the deflection measurements of highway and railway bridges, and they have been found to be potential high-precision deflection measurement instruments. An effective inclinometer monitoring scheme was designed and used to monitor the static deflections of bridge, and an improved data processing method was proposed through using individual analytical solutions in this study. Based on that, analysis was done to explain why the “5 inclinometers” suggested by previous research is the best choice for the deflection test of the simple supported and the continuous beam bridge, which has not explicitly explained in the previous literature. Through the comparative study of the deflection calculation results of the bridge finite element model, inclinometer is applied to measuring the static deflection of a large-span suspension bridge for the first time, and it is found when the number of the instruments is enough and arrangement of the instrument is reasonable, the deflection of suspension bridge can be tested using inclinometer method. In order to reduce the number of test points and improve the deflection measurement precision, semi-span arrangement scheme of test points is proposed, which is applied in the static deflection test of the Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge, and the error of static deflections is only 1.13% compared to GPS observations.

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To provide a highly applicable tool, which can assess the damage level and traffic capacity of girder bridges accurately and quickly, we proposed a new rapid assessment model for girder bridges, which contains a vulnerability model with parameter modification and a fast evaluation method for traffic capacity. Based on this model, we developed a rapid assessment software for girder bridges, using Visual C++ and ArcGIS Engine, in which the damage level and traffic capacity of girder bridges post-quake can be highlighted with colourful segments in the road network. Furthermore, we illustrated the functions and usages of this software through an application example.

In this paper, a test for investigating the vibrational hazards occurred in a modernized hospital was carried out, in which a lot of power equipment such as chilled water pumps and freezers, etc. were installed in the ground floor. The generated vibrations could be experienced on the upper floors including some medical precision room. Next, solation and active control strategies were proposed, and evidently the active control could improve the suppression a lot. This study illustrated that the great vibrational hazards could not be ignored anymore, and the followed resolution strategies for eliminating these vibrations seemed to be urgent. In tradition, the vibration isolations would not be involved in initial design for civil structures, but in fact this might lead to a severe problem to be addressed in the future, and this study could give inspiration for green building.