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Earthquake loss estimation for the Kathmandu Valley
Kathmandu Valley is geologically located on lacustrine sediment basin,
characterized by a long history of destructive earthquakes. The past events resulted in large
structural damage, loss of human life’s and property, and interrupted the social development.
In recent years, the earthquake risk in this area has significantly increased due to
uncontrolled development, poor construction practices with no earthquake safety provisions,
and lack of awareness amongst the general public and government authorities. In this
context, this study explores the realistic situation of earthquake losses due to future
earthquakes in Kathmandu Valley. To this end, three municipalities: (a) Kathmandu
Metropolitan City, (b) Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City and (c) Bhaktapur Municipality are
selected for a case study. The earthquake loss estimation in the selected municipalities is
performed through the combination of seismic hazard, structural vulnerability, and exposure
data. Regarding the seismic input, various earthquakes scenario considering four
seismic sources in Nepal are adopted. For what concerns the exposure, existing literature
describing the construction typologies and data from the recent national census survey of
2011 are employed to estimate ward level distribution of buildings. The economic losses
due to the earthquake scenarios are determined using fragility functions. Finally, the ward
level distribution of building damage and the corresponding economic losses for each
earthquake scenario is obtained using the OpenQuake-engine. The distribution of building
damage within the Kathmandu Valley is currently being employed in the development of a
shelter model for the region, involving various local authorities and decision makers