Invited Speaker: Keshav Basnet
Title: Need Assessment of Storm Water Management Guidelines in Nepal (Case Study on Gandaki Province)
Keshav Basnet is an Assistant professor at the Department of Civil and Geomatics Engineering. He’s also the MSc Coordinator at the Infrastructure Engineering and Management Program. In addition, he is the Member Secretary at the Research Management Unit at the Pashchimanchal Campus Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University located in Lamachaur, Pokhara, Nepal. He also works as an Executive Member of the Nepal Engineers’ Association – Gandaki Province. He’s the Vice President, Smartphones For Water Nepal (S4W-Nepal) as well.
Abstract:
Recently, the Environmental Protection Act 2076 has been implemented in Nepal which made provision be formulated by the provincial government and implemented to the community level through local government. Till date, not any regulation has been formulated primarily for the management of storm water in Nepal. Although, the highest annual rainfall of the country is observed in Gandaki province, the rainfall pattern differs in each province. Hence, the rules and regulations for environmental protection should preferably be drafted in the provincial level.
This research is intended to analyze the need of such guidelines to be incorporated for environmental protection at federal level. Many researchers around the world have discussed about the necessity of management approaches which comes with the start of urbanization. It is due to the change in coefficient of runoff and change in the rate of infiltration due to land use/land cover, which finally alters the overall hydrological cycle of the surrounding. Pokhara is considered as the ideal region for study as the city receives enormous amount of precipitation every monsoon season. Here, different perspectives have been analyzed on the basis of social need, qualitative approach and quantitative approach to justify the need of storm water management guidelines in Gandaki province. With the numerous newspaper reports on lack of proper storm water drainage infrastructure system in Pokhara, this problem has now been a buzz creating issue in public eye. Many past researches have pointed out the fact that the capacity of the drainage system in the Pokhara valley is not sufficient. Similarly, study has shown that the quality of discharge water in different outfalls in the city doesn’t meet the standards for pollution control issued and being implemented in different developing and developed countries in the world. Lack of such a regulatory framework has been a key problem that has created hindrance on coordination and design of public physical infrastructures for many urban planners, architects, engineers and the administrators in the time being.