ORIENTATION FOR FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR CBEWS
Two day orientation workshop was organized by Youth Alliance for Environment (YAE) and CARE Nepal for the field enumerators to collect data for feasibility study on Community Based Early Warning System (CBEWS) in SABAL Project districts (Udayapur, Khotang, Okhaldunga, Ramechhap, Sindhuli, Dolakha, Sindhupalchok, Kavrepananchowk, Makwanpur, Nuwakot and Rasuwa). More than 25 Local resource persons (LRPs) form 11 SABAL Projects district were brought together with the technical field enumerators in the workshop which was held in Dhulikhel on 9-10 January, 2017. The workshop was a part of the project “Feasibility Study on Community Based Early Warning Systems in SABAL Districts“. This project aims to review and assess (mapping) the existing community based early warning system in Nepal including SABAL program districts, identify the feasible area for EWS in 44 VDCs in 11 districts and recommend the most appropriate technology for the areas identified.
The workshop focused on multi-hazard early warning system and method of identifying feasible areas for Early Warning System installation mainly for landslide and flood. The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Deepak Chamlagain, Mr. Binod Parajuli, Mr. Sanot Adhikari, Mr. Hari Krishna Bhattarai, Mr. Hemanta Joshi and Raju Chauhan. The workshop began with the informal opening by Mr. Hari K. Bhattarai and introduction among the participants. On the first day, Mr. Sanot Adhikari introduced major hazard and disaster of Nepal and highlighted the need of early warning system in Nepal. This session was followed by hazard specific presentations where Dr. Chamlagain presented on the landslide hazard in Nepal and different things to be considered in gathering information from a landslide to determine the feasibility for EWS. Mr. Binod Parajuli from Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) shared what DHM had been doing regarding EWS in Nepal, especially on the Flood EWS. Dr. Chamlagain then simplified the mechanism of earthquake and also disclosed why Nepal is an earthquake hazard prone country and how effective are earthquake early warning systems. On the last session of first day, questionnaire and checklist for collecting information on EWS was provided to the participants in groups and discussion was done. This was followed by group work and presentation to have a mock data collection using the provided questionnaire. This session was facilitated by Mr. Hemanta Joshi and Mr. Raju Chauhan.
On the second day, participants were taken to Sindupalchowk to carry out field exercise for on-site data collection and also to identify the difficulties and obstacles in collecting the data from the field. The participants presented the result from the field exercise where different issues and questions were addressed by the experts. The orientation successfully concluded `with certificate distribution to the participants and final remarks from the CARE Nepal representative.