This paper outlines the common observed failure patterns in the buildings of Nepal after M_W 7.8 Gorkha (Nepal) earthquake. Several types of damage patterns were observed for reinforced concrete buildings, as well as for unreinforced masonry and adobe houses during the reconnaissance survey performed immediately after the earthquake of 25 April 2015. Several field visits in the affected districts were conducted and associated failure/damage patterns have been identified and analyzed. This paper also covers damage patterns in non-engineered buildings, middle and high-rise buildings, commercial complexes, administrative buildings, schools and other critical facilities from Kathmandu valley as well as other affected districts. The construction and structural deficiencies are identified as the major causes of failure, however local soil amplification, foundation problems, liquefaction associated damages and local settlement related damages are also significantly observed during this earthquake and reported in the present paper. In the end, the lessons learned from the field survey are resumed in order to give some guidelines for future construction practices.

Highway bridges play a significant role in maintaining safety and functionality of the society. The immediate damage of highway bridges caused by natural hazards can disrupt transportation systems, impede rescue and recovery activities. This disruption may result in tremendous financial and societal losses. Therefore, assessing vulnerability, recovery capability, and potential losses of bridges under natural hazards becomes a primary concern to decision-makers to facilitate the emergency response and recovery efforts. Under these concerns, resilience is a paramount performance indicator to evaluate and recover the functionality of structural systems under extreme events. In this article, an integrated framework for long-term resilience and loss assessment of highway bridges under multiple independent natural hazards is presented. The impacts of extreme events such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods on the life-cycle performance of bridges are illustrated. A stochastic renewal process model of the random occurrence of hazard events is used to compute the expected long-term resilience and damage loss by considering both time-independent and time varying occurrence characteristics. The proposed approach is applied to a bridge by considering the impacts of earthquake and hurricane hazards. The proposed framework can be implemented to the design, maintenance and retrofit optimisation of infrastructure systems under multiple extreme events.

Following the 25 April 2015 M _w 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake and subsequent aftershocks, field surveys were conducted on medium‐to‐high rise reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings with masonry infill located in the Kathmandu Valley. Rapid visual assessment, ambient vibration testing, and ground‐based lidar (GBL) showed that these buildings suffered damage ranging from light to severe, where damage occurred in both structural and nonstructural elements, but was most prevalent in nonstructural masonry infills. Finite‐element structural analyses of selected buildings corroborate field observations of only modest structural damage. The lack of severe structural damage in this relatively limited class of engineered medium‐to‐high rise RC infill frame buildings illustrates the impact of modern seismic design standards and stands in stark contrast to the severe damage and collapse observed in low‐rise nonengineered RC infill frame buildings. Nonetheless, the nonstructural damage hindered many of these buildings from being occupied for many months following the earthquake and subsequent aftershocks.