Seismology-at-School in Nepal: a first regional educational and seismic network

Nepal is located above the convergent plate boundary between the Indian and Eurasian plates. Therefore, it has experienced devastating earthquakes throughout history, claiming lives and causing significant damage. The most recent large Gorkha earthquake (M 7.8) in 2015 killed nearly 9,000 people and injured approximately 22,000. Still, these casualties and damage were far under the expectations. After the Gorkha earthquake, Nepali people are eager to know more about earthquakes and seek safety.

Schools play a vital role in the society and teach the essential elements of common values and culture. A proper education in a school not only teaches the children, but, also reaches deep across their families into the community. Earthquake education reaching a broad group of the population early in their life is strongly needed, but seismology is not part of the curriculum in Nepali schools. Our initiative aims to introduce seismology in Nepali schools with the specific focus on education and crowdsourcing.

We aim to develop several educational activities within this initiative. Beyond teaching adapted to various levels of classes, we strive for "learning-by-doing" and install low-cost seismometers in schools. We have started this scheme in the Western Nepal region, where seismologists expect a great (M>8) earthquake, by installing inexpensive seismometers and then seek that the example is spread to other areas. We tested several types of low-cost sensors in the lab. In the field, we have started installing Raspberry Shake 1D. The data will be available freely and used to make shake maps, so we hope that crowdsourcing will also be useful for scientific goals like as earthquake detection, shake map etc. Moreover, the seismometer in each school will allow students to check and see whether an earthquake has happened in the region, and what was the respective shaking.

We have installed the first low-cost seismometer in Nepal in western region, which is recording continuously in front of the student's eyes, and some local earthquakes have already been recorded. We also have conducted a survey to know the understanding level of local people where 500 responses are collected from 20 involved schools. This program will attract students towards seismology and will play a crucial role to make earthquake-safe communities.