CIVIL ENGINEERING

In Nepal, 48% of women and girls are between the ages of 15-44. Though menstruation is a natural process, it remains a taboo and is stigmatized, and in worst case scenarios promotes negative cultural practices impacting the lives, health, and safety of women and girls. UNICEF conducted a research to explore the socio-cultural practices related to menstruation and management and consequences pertaining to girls’ education. The research indicated that despite availability of WASH facilities in schools, girls often struggled to manage their menstruation hygiene confidently and effectively. Many girls experienced shame, fear, confusion, teasing, lack of accurate information and advice. 15 to 22% of girls missed schools due to menstruation. The research found a significant impact of WASH Programme with 53% of girls in Bajura district using sanitary pads. The study recommends multidimensional interventions to address the issues identified. This paper presents aimed at sharing the results ...

Advancements in Geographical Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) technology, hydrologic modeling and availability of wider coverage hydrometeorological data have facilitated the use of GIS and hydrological modelling tools in studies related to hydropower potential. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is the primary data required for these tools. They have become more accessible and many are freely available. These DEMs have different resolution and their errors vary due to their primary data acquisition techniques and processing methods. However, their effects on the hydropower potential assessment are less investigated. This study evaluates the effects of 6 freely available DEMs: ALOS 12.5 m, SRTM 90 m, SRTM 30 m, ASTER G-DEM version-3 30 m, AW3D 30 m and Cartosat-1 version-3 30 m on the Gross Run-off-River Hydropower Potential (GRHP) assessment, using GIS and hydrological modelling tools. West Rapti River (WRR) basin in Nepal was chosen for the case study. Soil and Water Tool ...

COMPOSTING About 70 % of municipal waste is normally organic that can cause problems of smell, leachate, stray animals in landfills. Valuable landfill space can be used for other wastes by composting these materials rather than dumping them on landfills. It may however be difficult to control inert and plastics contamination from municipal solid waste. Recycling at source is most economical and environment friendly method of waste management. Compost is valuable resource for farmers and composting at source keeps inorganic waste clean and makes it easier for recycling.

Land pooling projects help minimize premature conversion of farmlands and control urban sprawl. It is an effective tool to provide housing, infrastructure, and services in an efficient manner. Even difficult and dispersed areas in the urban fringe can be served through land pooling. This paper contains the scope of works for a consultant for land pooling.

New-Baneshwor is one of the major junctions and also known as the heart of the Kathmandu Valley. This place consists of all the major educational institution, hospitals, a wide range of market, and most important " constitutional assembly " of the country. So it is one of the busiest places of Kathmandu Valley with high density traffic. The main cause of the problems that occurred in the area of New-Baneshwor is due to heavy traffic volumes which exceed the capacity of the intersection. In view of the above, it was necessary to analyze the existing conditions and proffers some alternative solutions. Before carrying out an analysis, a field surveys at peak hours, for example, in the morning (09:20 to 11:05 am) and evening (05:20 to 06:50 pm) was conducted. The number of vehicles was counted manually with " video graphic survey " according to types of vehicles. From the analysis study, it was found that the Level of Service (LOS) was F during morning as well as evening peak hours. This means that the capacity of the existing road is no longer able to accommodate the traffic flow. One of the alternative solutions for the congestion that occurs at the intersection of New-Baneshwor is to apply the efficiency of the intersection that is not provided with the Four phases signal planning, Three phases signal planning by providing U-Turn, Fly over with existing scenario, Four phases signal planning with flyover, Three phases signal planning with flyover by providing U-Turn verifying queue pocket area for U-Turn. Based on the travel time and delay reduction with 5 comparative modeling it shows that the three phases signal planning with flyover by providing U-Turn effectively decreases delay and travel time by 81.92% and 80.1% in morning and evening peak time respectively maintaining Level of Service C, in addition, Maitighar, Tinkune, Old Baneshwor as well as Sankhamul lane is found to have decreased by minimum 60% in the morning and evening which was found to be the most technically efficient to be applied.

There are many examples in Hydraulic Engineering where only deterministic approaches are not sufficient due to stochastic nature of variables. For reliability based calculations, Monte Carlo simulation can be used to find accurate failure probabilities but it requires a lot of simulations for low failure probabilities and small variances in results. An example is a river dike at the lower reach of a tidal river, where there is always threat of dike failure due to extreme events of river flood or sea level fluctuations or coincidence of both extremes. For such cases, there is need of hydrodynamic model for flood routing and finding water level in each segment of the dike. During Monte Carlo Simulation, it requires a loop through the hydrodynamic model for each of the random boundaries, which makes simulation very time consuming and unacceptable. Hence, there is requirement of clever sampling techniques and other methods, which are explored for solution in this paper.
A simple model is analysed with overflowing failure mechanism simulated in MatLab, described by a linear limit state function with uncorrelated non-Gaussian input variables, containing probabilistic loops with SOBEK for each random simulation with importance sampling to find two-days overflowing failure probability of 80 km long dike along Western Scheldt, Province of Zeeland, The Netherlands. The Likelihood Bound test for the expected failure probability, and Response Database concept for probabilistic loops are presented as time saving techniques, which are analysed and applied on Monte Carlo Importance Sampling.

After the long decade civil conflict, Nepal has been moving through a transitional phase for the development and prosperity. Comparing among the landlocked state, the indicators depict low level of infrastructure development. Being landlocked and mountainous country, Nepal has high trading cost due to difficult geography and lack of reliable infrastructures, decreasing the competitiveness domestically and internationally. North South connectivity not only connects China and India but also revives the role of Nepal as land linked. Nepal is always trying to boost economic growth using liberalization, decentralization policy and now transforming the unitary state to federal state. The growing expectation of people towards prosperity and development has driven the state to make investment on large scale connectivity projects in transport, energy, aviation, communication sector. Having resource constraints, state should mobilize the scarce resources in rational and optimum ways to maximi...