The National Science Foundation (NSF) will fund research grants to better understand the causes of the earthquake that struck Nepal last April, published on Monday. Grants from the Directorate for Geosciences and Directorate for Engineering total approximately $760,000聽and are rapid-response awards, meant for research that must be conducted quickly.
The magnitude 7.8 earthquake聽that hit Nepal on April 25聽killed more than 8,800 and injured almost 23,000 people. While the general causes are not mysterious鈥攖he region sits at the border of the Indian tectonic plate and the Asian plate鈥攖here is more to be learned about the immediate effects and aftershocks of the plates鈥 collision.
鈥淪tudying the damage to this structural system and the challenges to disaster management will help us better understand the vulnerabilities of similar systems, particularly those in California,鈥澛燩ramod Khargonekar, assistant director for engineering at the NSF, said in the press release. 鈥淲ith more data to inform more resilient designs, engineering advances can enable infrastructure to better withstand future hazards and to bounce back faster with minimal loss.鈥