Nepal’s Unprecedented Floods: Advancing Engineering and Risk-Sensitive Urban Planning

Dr. Basanta Raj Adhikari, Director of the Center for Disaster Studies at Tribhuvan University’s Institute of Engineering, joins Genie Godula to discuss the limitations of conventional disaster prevention in the Himalayas. With flood velocities reaching 170 to 180 kilometers per hour and hazards spanning from avalanches to glacial lake outbursts, he notes that comprehensively monitoring Nepal’s steep, complex terrain is practically impossible. However, his analysis avoids fatalism. Rather than attempting to predict every extreme event, he advocates for a shift toward risk-informed adaptation. According to Adhikari, Nepal must pinpoint high-risk hotspots via satellite observation, enhance these findings with ground-based monitoring and early-warning systems, and integrate these insights into risk-sensitive land-use planning.

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