Virtual Earthquake Reconnaissance Team (VERT) Summary by Tracy Becker and Laura Whitehurst.
Since 2012, Anne Sanquini, a PhD candidate of Geological Sciences at Stanford University has led a study of seismic- resistant schools and public buildings suggested by the National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET) and engineers from the Department of Education with the help of Sundar Thapaliya, an MPH graduate from California State University.
In 2014, Sanquini completed a film about five community schools that had been made earthquake-safe. She and Thapaliya had worked with a group of film students from Kathmandu University to produce what they hoped would be a video to test a theory on how people can be motivated to prepare for disasters.
The 20-minute documentary demonstrated how school communities and property owners could learn about earthquake-resistant construction. It was tested among 800 teachers, parents and alumni from 16 schools in Kathmandu Valley.
After the earthquake, the Baardali team went back to the schools featured in the film and found out that they had suffered no damage. In fact, people from nearby areas took shelter in the schools as the aftershocks continued.
Post-earthquake, the documentary has been updated to incorporate a positive and credible message about earthquake-resistant construction and has interviews with people who have successfully built such schools.
V1. Source
Curated topics from the April 25, 2015, Nepal Earthquake to help inform reconnaissance activities, identify impacted regions, and help document the timeline of earthquake response/recovery.
Information on school buildings, especially those retrofitted or involved in mitigation programs pre-quake, from the April 25, 2015, Nepal Earthquake.
