In the Shadow of the Himalaya: Assessing Nepal's Use of School Retrofitting as Catalyst for Earthquake Risk Reduction

Photo by R. Paci-Green

WWU classes for Spring, 2020 are being taught online. As such, the Huxley Speaker Series is revisiting favorite presentations from the Archives.

This talk was originally presented as part of the Huxley Speaker Series in Spring 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klABCuOzll8

 

Dr. Rebekah Paci-Green will discuss earthquake risk reduction in Nepal. Nepalese communities live on top of the world’s most active seismic zone. For the last two decades, organizations have attempted to reduce the impacts of these events by strengthening Nepalese public schools using a variety low-cost retrofitting and community development strategies. The April 2015 Gorkha earthquake, a massive magnitude M9.0 event, damaged over 90 percent of the schools in the effected region and put these school retrofitting projects to the ultimate test. Three months after the earthquake, Dr. Paci-Green and colleague Dr. Bishnu Pandey assessed these projects against match-paired sites without intervention, using a mixed methods approach of visual inspection, damage transects and semi-structured interviews with stakeholder groups. Their research documented both instances of success, and a range of challenges. In her talk titled, “In the Shadow of the Himalaya: Assessing Nepal’s use of school retrofitting as catalysts for earthquake risk reduction,” Paci-Green will describe a framework for Nepal’s post-earthquake reconstruction based on her research team’s findings.

About the Speaker

Rebekah Paci-Green
Rebekah Paci-Green
Associate Professor, Huxley College of the Environment

Dr. Paci-Green is an Associate Professor at Huxley College of the Environment and Director of the Resilience Institute at Western Washington University. She received her PhD from Cornell University where she combined structural engineering and anthropology to study physical and social vulnerability and risk perceptions in informal districts of Istanbul, Turkey. In addition to her work in Nepal, Paci-Green has worked with community-based organizations in Turkey, India, and Central Asia to develop and implement disaster risk reduction education material.

Environmental Speaker Series

The Environmental Speaker Series is hosted by the College of the Environment at Western Washington University.

The Series is free and open to the public. Talks are held each Thursday at 4:30 pm in Academic Instructional Center West room 204 - AW-204. Talks will also be streamed via zoom. Register with the Alumni Association for the zoom link. Paid parking is available in lot C.

Learn more about the Environmental Speaker Series
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