Hi, I’m Apil. Welcome to my page

Welcome

I am a PhD student in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, working with Prof. Larissa Larsen on issues of urban resilience, governance, and equitable recovery. I am also affiliated with the AIDD Lab (Advancing Infrastructure through Data and Design), led by Prof. Sabine Loos, where I collaborate on interdisciplinary research linking disasters,impact focusing on social inclusion.

My research examines how post-disaster housing recovery can be made more equitable, efficient, and locally responsive. I use ethnographic and mixed-method approaches to understand how financial assistance, technical support, and institutional frameworks shape recovery outcomes—especially for marginalized communities. I aim to contribute toward recovery models that not only rebuild structures but restore livelihoods, autonomy, and resilience.

If you want to meet me over zoom and talk something exciting, let’s schedule our next meet here. Let’s Schedule

Current Projects

• Post-Disaster Housing Recovery: Comparative analysis of satisfaction and equity in household-level outcomes following Nepal’s 2015 earthquake
• Recovery Governance: Evaluating the role of state, NGO, and community actors in shaping recovery planning and implementation
• Resilience and Inclusion: Advancing frameworks that integrate lived experiences into disaster planning and evaluation
• Chitwan Flooding: Investigating how local stakeholders coordinate everyday responses to low-attention disasters like floods in Chitwan, Nepal.

Latest Publications

• Interdisciplinary perspectives on the intersections of roads, sustainable development, and disaster resilience
  July 01, 2025
  International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
  

  This paper introduces the concept of 'roads-in-relation' as a framing device for interdisciplinary research that links road networks, sustainable development, and disaster resilience, based on...

• Performance assessment of buildings impacted by the 2019 windstorm in the Central-south of Nepal
  October 01, 2024
  Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
  

  The 2019 windstorm in Nepal exposed critical structural vulnerabilities in rural housing, underscoring the urgent need for resilient building design and retrofitting to protect disaster-prone...

Latest Blog Posts

• What ails heritage reconstruction?
  August 20, 2019

  The 2015 great earthquakes had a major impact on cultural heritage. Hundreds of monuments, including palaces, temples, monasteries, chaityas, bahals, sattals and patis collapsed and...

• Debunking Smartness of the City
  August 20, 2016

  With a vague set of guidelines and widespread political pomposity, we are often told that the majority of Nepal’s population now lives in urban areas....