The 14th International Symposium on New Technology for Urban Safety of Megacities in Asia has been started in Kathmandu. Chief Guest, Minister of Industry Som Prasad Pandey has inaugurated the Symposium. I

Addressing the program, he remembered who lost their lives during Gorkha Earthquake , the earthquake killed about 9000 people and left behind more then 8,00,000 families homeless. Minister Pandey expressed the commitment of Nepal Government to rebuild earthquake devastated buildings more in safer and better ways ensuring disaster resilience.

Inaugural Session was chaired by NSET President Shiva Bahadur Pradhanang and addressed by Gangalal Tuladhar, Member of Parliament and Ex. Education Minister, of Nepal, Japanese ambassador to Nepal Masashi Ogawa, JICA’s Nepal representative Tsutomu Shimizu, Prof. Kimiro Meguro - Director of ICUS, IIS, The University of Tokyo, Japan and Dr. Amod Mani Dixit, Executive Director of NSET, Nepal.

The overall objective of the symposium is to share experiences on urban disaster safety and environmental management across the countries in the world and targets interaction among scientists, researchers, academics and decision makers from different countries.

According to a press release issued by NSET, total 87 scientific papers are planned to present in two-day schedule comprising 7 keynote presentations focusing on different sectors such as Disaster Risk Management, Urban Planning and Environmental considerations. There are nearly 2 hundred and 50 peoples from the eight different countries intensively engaged intensively in this scientific discourses to share, learn and discuss on various facets of urban disaster safety including lessons of Gorkha Earthquake.

This symposium was proposed to be organized in Nepal during the closing ceremony of 13th USMCA organized in Myanmar in November 2014 considering the high risk of different disasters in Nepal as well as continuous efforts of different organizations to reduce the risk. After the Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal, relevance of this symposium has increased further.