Revisions to the Nepalese Building Code (NBC 105:2020): New Seismic Hazard Provisions

Enhanced seismic hazard assessments are needed to improve codes of practice for use in earthquake-prone regions. In 2020, Nepal published an update to the 1994 building code, which incorporates learning from new research after the 7.8 Mw 2015 Gorkha earthquake and best practices from seismic codes at the international level. In this technical note, the seismic hazard of the latest version of the code is compared with recent probabilistic seismic hazard analysis studies developed for the region including some results from the Seismic Safety and Resilience of Schools (SAFER) project in Nepal. The comparison is contextualized within the overall framework of best performance requirements to effectively improve the building stock at the national level accounting for available resources.