Flood exposure is increasing in the Himalayan catchments covered by a 2026 study, while Nepal government assessments describe settlements and urban growth in flood-prone locations. The evidence points to a serious planning challenge—but it does not show that construction is rising in every vulnerable area of Nepal, or that more exposed buildings automatically mean greater flood damage.
What has increased, and where?
A 2026 study in Scientific Reports examined catchments in Nepal and transboundary regions of India and China. Its figures describe that study area and its methods, not Nepal as a whole. The measures also capture different kinds of exposure: proximity to river drainage and location inside modeled glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) extents.
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| Finding | Place and period | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Building area increased 46% | Study area; 2016–2023 | Building area within 0–50 m of river channels by vertical height above nearest drainage (HAND). This indicates proximity, not confirmed inundation. |
| Building area increased 77% | Study area; 2016–2023 | Building area inside the study’s modeled GLOF extents. |
| 18%, or 293,800 people | Study-area catchment population estimate for 2026 | Modeled population living within 0–50 m HAND. It is an exposure estimate, not a count of people certain to be flooded. |
| Flood-prone areas cover about 8% of Nepal; 3,443 flood events were recorded | Nepal; events recorded during 1971–2019 | Figures reported by the Ministry of Forests and Environment’s 2021 rural and urban settlement assessment. The area estimate and event count use that report’s definitions. |
| 29,356 hectares and 70,428 people exposed | Six prioritized Terai basins; publication date not stated on the Department of Water Resources and Irrigation page | Exposure under a modeled 1-in-50-year return-period flood case, not a nationwide estimate. |
Proximity is not the same as a flood forecast
HAND describes how high a place sits vertically above its nearest drainage. A building close to a channel by this measure may be exposed, but the measure alone does not establish that floodwater will reach it. The GLOF figure uses a separate modeled inundation extent associated with potential glacial lake outburst flooding. Neither measure is a record of realized losses.
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Exposure means people or assets are located where a hazard could reach them. Vulnerability is about how well they can withstand, respond to and recover from a flood. Income, housing tenure, and social and human capital can shape that capacity. A building count or exposure estimate therefore cannot, by itself, tell readers which households are most at risk or how much damage a future flood would cause.
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Why are settlements growing in flood-prone places?
Nepal’s Ministry of Forests and Environment describes informal settlements in rapidly growing cities on exposed riverbank land. Its 2021 assessment says: “Many such settlements are located on land exposed to extreme weather such as river banks that are prone to flash floods.” This describes a settlement challenge, not proof that all new construction is occurring in hazard zones.
The same assessment notes that intense rainfall can increase flood losses, particularly in flood-prone parts of the Terai. A separate sector report identifies impervious urban surfaces, runoff and limited drainage capacity as concerns, and attributes an increasing flood trend mainly to climate change and land-use change. Those factors can interact: rainfall and river conditions create the hazard, while development patterns and infrastructure influence where water flows and who is exposed. The sources do not assign a single causal share to climate change or construction.
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The 2026 study also notes informal settlement expansion and tourism-driven construction along some river corridors. That is a site-specific observation from the study, not evidence of a uniform national trend. The available findings establish an increase in measured exposure in the study area, but do not prove that construction alone caused it.
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Increasing exposure matters because more buildings and people may be located where a flood could affect them. But risk depends on more than the number or area of exposed structures. It also depends on the hazard, the likelihood and extent of inundation, the quality of buildings and infrastructure, and people’s capacity to prepare and recover.
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The 2026 study notes that consistent, high-resolution exposure data are scarce and that building-footprint products vary in accuracy and completeness. Its results are observational and model-based; they are useful evidence of change in the places and periods measured, not a precise forecast of future losses. Nepal’s 2021 settlement assessment and the Terai basin figures use different places, time windows and definitions, so their numbers should not be combined as if they measured one national trend.
Nepal Disaster Report 2024 identifies GLOFs as a hazard for Himalayan settlements and downstream areas and notes heightened settlement vulnerability. It adds national disaster context, but does not quantify a construction trend.
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What can reduce exposure and vulnerability?
The evidence points to several complementary planning needs rather than one fix. Safer land-use decisions and siting can limit new exposure; drainage and flood-protection measures can manage water where development already exists; and early warning and community response capacity can help people act when a hazard threatens. These measures address different parts of risk, and no single exposure statistic shows which intervention will work best in a particular settlement.
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- For planners: distinguish river-flood zones from modeled GLOF extents, and make the limits and uncertainty of maps clear when using them for siting decisions.
- For urban authorities: account for runoff and drainage capacity as built surfaces expand, especially in flood-prone areas.
- For communities: pair hazard information with practical warning and response arrangements; a map of exposure does not itself provide time or capacity to evacuate.
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