earthquake tools investment for Nepal
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Facebook warning 2015 earthquake
'an accident and nightmare waiting to happen'
I was walking through core congested areas of Asan, Mangal Bajar and Bhaktapur the very area where that earthquake was and I thought at the very time that the areas were heading for trouble. I was very worried because of the manner of building construction and population density of the valley. With an annual population growth rate of 6.5 per cent and one of the highest urban densities in the world, the people living in the Kathmandu Valley were clearly facing a serious and growing earthquake risk.
It was also clear that the next large earthquake to strike near the Valley would cause significantly greater loss of life, structural damage, and economic hardship.
Resting on colliding tectonic plates, Nepal is under constant threat of earthquake of natural disaster.
I knew disaster was coming soon.
One week before the earthquake struck in 2015 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2015_Nepal_earthquake
) I started frantically writing posts in Facebook warning people of the valley, however, people didn't believe me.
As per geologists Nepal lies atop a major fault line between two tectonic plates. Since unbroken upper part of the fault is continuously building more pressure over the time, researchers have predicted that another major tremor could hit Nepal's Gorkha district within years, decades rather than the centuries that typically elapse between quakes. Are the people of Nepal aware of the prediction? Has government made effort to flow such critical information to general public? The disaster management cells of municipalities and other concerned agencies operating under the vulnerable areas needs to be further strengthened.
Nepal should learn from how many countries that sit in high seismic zones are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to build resilience against future earthquakes. This system can drastically reduce the loss of life, property and cultural heritage sites during future shocks. Such system can analyze massive amount of seismic data that can help better understandd earthquakes and thus provide faster and reliable early warnings.
Nepal should upgrade the quality of of education to meet the international standard so the the products in return can contribute in revenue generation for the nation in order to launch such technically intensive and expensive solutions.
The vulnerable groups like children, senior citizens, hospital patients, disabled groups etc will be benefited by these new discoveries and it is certain that AI will revolutionize early warning system in the days to come. AI can learn to discern a very specific pattern in the sound emitted by fault before it ruptures. This pattern can tell experts how much stress the fault is undergoing, and with the help of AI, can make an accurate prediction of the time remaining before tremors begin.
Researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an artificial intelligence (A.I.) neural network to better help detect earthquakes of all sizes and may help bring seismologists closer to the elusive goal of earthquake prediction.
We have no news on strategies from the Nepal Academy of Science and technology who claims to have installed its first batch of earthquake 80 numbers of early warning sensors in June 2015. This agency has estimated that nepal will need 320 sensors to cover the entire country. It has also been estimated that the country would required to work out a budget for setting up Super computers and sophisticated broadband seismometers for this purpose. The cost of technology is coming down. Any thing we can do to reduce cost of natural hazards is worth it.
In the context of Nepal the project may seem as expensive. The government should partner with private sector researchers, academic institutions and non-governmental organization to adopt innovative technical solutions that are adaptable to our needs for building resilience against future earthquakes.
My lovely house where I grew up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyyEZPUEl5s&t=59s
and
my lovely institute IIT K