Earthquakes, floods and glacial lakes

Part of Civil engineering and infrastructure. Materials, bridges, tunnels, dams, disaster engineering and the codes behind them.

5 stories so far

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 2:57 pm · 5 min read

M7.7 earthquake damages buildings and roads across central Panama

The shallow quake on 9 October collapsed homes, a hotel and church towers and cut off the town of Tonosi by road; early reports listed no deaths.

For you: Older masonry churches and towers collapsed while engineered infrastructure such as the canal kept working, which is the pattern seen in Nepal in 2015. Early reconnaissance after events like this feeds into building codes worldwide. For BCE students, it is a reminder that roads, water plants and schools are lifelines whose failure stretches a disaster out for weeks, and that designing them to keep working after a quake is part of the job.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 2:33 pm · 5 min read

Golden Gate Bridge begins final phase of its seismic retrofit

Work on the towers and suspension spans started with night lane closures on 5 October.

For you: Retrofitting an old structure while it carries traffic is a growing share of civil engineering work worldwide, and Nepal has many ageing bridges in seismic zones. Energy dissipation devices, performance-based design and the idea of a lifeline structure that must stay open after a quake are advanced topics that build on the structural analysis and steel design taught in BCE. They are worth following for anyone interested in bridge engineering.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 1:33 pm · 5 min read

IIT Mandi maps 2,076 glacial lakes in Himachal, flags nine as risky

Satellite analysis found about 710 more lakes than in 2015 and a 28% rise in total lake area, with bridges and villages in hazard zones.

For you: The method behind this study, tracking lakes over time with free satellite images and GIS, is something an engineering student in Nepal can learn and use for a final-year project. Nepal's glacial lake inventory needs regular updating, and bridges, hydropower intakes and roads downstream need flood-path checks. Remote sensing, hydrology and hydraulic modelling together are becoming standard tools for civil engineers working in mountain regions.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 1:09 pm · 5 min read

Pakistan installs 286 glacial flood warning systems in the north

The $37 million GLOF-II project covers 24 valleys in Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, amid questions over systems that do not work.

For you: Nepal faces the same glacial lake hazards and runs similar sensor networks. The Pakistani experience shows that installing gauges is the easy part; power supply, data links, maintenance budgets and getting a warning to a village in minutes are where systems fail. That is joint work for civil engineers who model floods and design protection works, and for BEI graduates who build sensor, telemetry and alert systems.

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Civil & infrastructure11 Oct, 1:03 pm · 5 min read

M7.8 Flores earthquake damages nearly 99,000 homes in Indonesia

A shallow thrust quake off Flores on 15 August killed about 130 people and damaged close to 99,000 houses, with a small tsunami.

For you: Most of the damage was to ordinary houses, the same kind of non-engineered and semi-engineered masonry that failed across Nepal in 2015. The numbers show why seismic design is not only about tall buildings. Nepal's building code, the mandatory rules of thumb for small houses and post-quake damage assessment are all BCE topics, and rapid building safety tagging after an earthquake is real work that young engineers are called to do.

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