THESIS ABSTRACT

Abstract

The impact of the "April 2015 Gorkha Earthquake" was profound, resulting in immense loss of life, cultural heritage, buildings, and profound emotional distress. More than 72% of the school buildings of the country’s 35,000 schools were considered unsafe and required seismic retrofitting. Retrofitting refers to the process of enhancing the strength, seismic resilience, and overall performance of a given structure through necessary modifications and improvements. The government has prioritized the retrofitting process and there has been a noticeable increase in the practice of retrofitting within Nepal after the Gorkha earthquake. Disaster Resilience of Schools project is a project operated from government for making the government schools disaster resilient through reconstruction and retrofitting. This research aims to find out the deviation and its causes in retrofitting through field observation and checklist. It identifies the challenges in retrofitting of government schools and suggests probable measures to overcome it. Opportunities associated with retrofitting of government schools are also studied under this research. The objectives of the study were achieved through three approaches i.e. Field Observation, Questionnaire Survey and Key Informant Interview. At first, field observation of government schools undergoing retrofit with the help of the checklist was done to find out the deviation and its causes. Secondly, a questionnaire survey was carried out among contractor and consultant representatives to determine the challenges and opportunities in retrofitting of government schools. One hundred twenty-seven questionnaires were distributed to contractor and consultant personnel representatives through google forms. After PCA and Smart PLS analysis, four challenges and four opportunities were identified respectively. KII survey was carried out to suggest the possible remedial measures to overcome the challenges during retrofit of government schools. The major deviation found includes removal of hunch at beam column junction, eccentric footing construction instead of concentric, three sides and two sides column jacketing instead of four and three sides, removal of bandages and splints, removal of slab extension works etc. viii Major challenges found during retrofit of government schools includes “Economic”, “Technical”, “Regulatory” and “Cultural” challenges .Economic challenges are the most significant challenges followed by technical, regulatory and cultural respectively. The opportunities during retrofit of government schools were divided into four components. Results have shown that “Social Component” was the most significant benefit of government schools retrofitting. “Economic and environmental”,” Technical” and “Adaptability and suitability” ranked as second, third and fourth major opportunities of government schools retrofitting. In this research study, the suggestive probable measures to overcome the existing challenges are: Seek funding opportunities, Cost-sharing and collaboration, Prioritize and phase retrofitting, Long-term financial planning, Engage expert consultants, Conduct thorough assessments, Develop retrofitting guidelines, Familiarization with regulations, Streamline the approval process, Raise awareness and support, Engage stakeholders and Leverage community resources. This research concentrates on exploring KII approach to suggest the measures to overcome the challenges in retrofitting of government schools. This research study recommended the government organizations and all construction professionals to work as team by incorporating all the major critical factors i.e. deviation in drawing implementation, challenges & opportunities and possible remedial measures to overcome the challenges before starting the project execution and during the construction phase of the project.

Keywords

Retrofitting, Challenges, Opportunities, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Structural equation modeling (SEM).