Landslides and floods are globally occurring natural hazards that pose a significant threat to human life and sustainable development particularly in mountainous topography, earthquake and monsoonal climates. Landslides and rock-falls in these regions often detach fractured bedrock and deliver large boulders downslope that block roads, destroy buildings and kill people. On entering the river channel network, boulders may be bulldozed by large floods and block hydropower infrastructure, jeopardizing electricity supply and the economy. Thus, boulders amplify the impacts of both landslides and floods.

The UBK had one of the highest densities of landslides of any catchment in the 2015 Gorkha earthquake and was hit by a damaging flash flood in 2016. Accounting for boulders in landslide and flood disaster evaluation and resilience is important in the recovery and ongoing development of this catchment and will also have wider regional and global benefits.

SWN is a UEA Nepali partner to support BOULDER field engagement activities at Upper Bhotekoshi and to organize workshop events to integrate findings of research to local and national audience.

• Identify boulder hazard across the landscape and improve understanding of the production of boulders on hillslopes in the UBK
• Develop a new GPS boulder tracking system to improve understanding of boulder movement
• Develop a boulder-flood hazard early warning system in the UBK
• Integrate findings into landslide and flood hazard evaluation to increase resilience to landslide and flood hazards.

• Support UEA team in field activities to tag boulders
• Engage with community and local representative to disseminate scope of research
• Support to organize workshop events to integrate finding of research to local and national entities
• Continue to advocate learning and findings of this research to increase resilience in landslide and flood disaster event.

SWN team supports adoption and learning from the latest methods and technique of hazard mapping based on the project findings.