The floods in the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers have exposed a striking gap in the country’s emergency response. The government agencies are increasingly using digital portals, drones, GIS, satellite images and artificial intelligence to collect and share information, while rescuers on the ground still lack enough specialised equipment to reach people trapped under mud and debris.

State agencies, including the Prime Minister’s Office, Nepali Army, Nepal Police and the national disaster management authority (NDRRMA), have launched extensive information drives across social media platforms, emergency SMS broadcasts, mobile ringtone alerts, and specialised applications.

Concurrently, independent tech groups and civic initiatives have rolled out digital mapping tools, tracing scripts, and open-source data repositories to track missing individuals and compile disaster statistics.

Yet, as the death toll rises and survivors remain isolated, technical analysts, emergency responders, and affected citizens point out a stark contrast. While the country’s digital communication strategy appears polished, its physical search, rescue, and early warning infrastructure remains woefully underdeveloped.

On Saturday, a video circulated widely on social media showing a Nepali Army search team navigating the tunnel of the Trishuli Hydroelectric Project to locate trapped workers. The soldiers relied entirely on the small beams of their smartphone flashlights.

The video sparked immediate public outcry. “Without proper equipment, in the faint light of a mobile phone?” commented social media user Irsad Ansari. Many others echoed his disbelief, asking how complex subterranean rescue operations could succeed without specialised industrial lighting, heavy demolition tools, and advanced tunnelling equipment.

Though the government has attempted to project a modern, ‘smart’ response through digital maps and online dashboards, critics argue that these efforts fail to translate into tangible assistance on the ground. Public frustration has mounted into a familiar refrain across affected communities: The government is active on social media, but absent in society; it lives in the cloud, but fails on the ground.

On paper, several tech-driven coordination systems have been activated. The Ministry of Home Affairs and NDRRMA, in collaboration with the Department of Roads, recently launched the ‘Setu Rapid’ portal. The platform aims to integrate field rescuers, regional command posts, and heavy equipment operators onto a single live map.

Similarly, the Prime Minister’s Office established an integrated emergency assistance portal to process rescue requests, log missing persons reports, and track relief supply distributions. Emergency communications are also being funneled through the National Emergency Operation Centre, the Flood Forecasting Division, and NDRRMA’s dedicated hotline (1234).

To streamline relief donations, the government has set up integrated QR code payments through platforms like Nepal Clearing House Limited (NCHL), ConnectIPS, eSewa, and major commercial banking applications. Authorities have urged the public to donate solely through official channels, warning against unverified QR codes circulating online.

Minister for Education, Science, Technology and Innovation Mahabir Pun defended the state’s technological strategy, assuring that the government is utilising available digital tools to the fullest extent for search, rescue, and rebuilding.

“We are currently working alongside a dedicated team of young IT professionals and artificial intelligence specialists to collect and process critical damage data,” Pun said. “Our nation has never properly established an integrated early warning system. That neglect in the past is precisely why we are facing such immense destruction today. Moving forward, prioritising early warning systems across all vulnerable river basins will be our absolute top duty.”

Security forces maintain that advanced rescue teams have been deployed to the affected zones. Netra Bahadur Karki, spokesperson for the Armed Police Force, stated that specialised personnel including live detection equipment operators, drone squads, rope rescue teams, swift-water divers, and collapsed-structure search teams are actively working in the field.

Nepali Army spokesperson Rajaram Basnet added that heavy physical breaching tools, such as demolition hammers, rotary hammers, and helicopter rescue baskets, are being utilised where feasible.

To assess the damage across devastated swathes of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading districts, civil tech groups have stepped in to assist state agencies. Bikas Krochme Gurung, an engineer and president of the Robotics Association of Nepal, explained that his organisation’s Drone Rapid Response Team is deploying aerial photography, thermal imaging, and LiDAR sensors to map devastated areas.

“Where landslides have completely washed away highways and bridges, drones have proven crucial for measuring the distance between severed riverbanks, assessing erosion depth, and analysing mudflow density,” said Gurung. “We are sending geo-referenced data directly to the NDRRMA and the Ministry of Home Affairs to help prioritise immediate rescue missions. Currently, between 80 and 100 trained drone pilots are on standby across the country.”

According to Gurung, the Drone Federation of India and Indian security forces have offered to supply additional drone units. However, because low-altitude drone operations can interfere with air traffic, aerial drone missions are being strictly managed alongside emergency military helicopters, which are currently dedicated exclusively to airlifting trapped survivors rather than dropping relief supplies.

Despite these efforts, social media influencers and public commentators argue that the disaster has laid bare Nepal’s structural vulnerabilities. Popular social media influencer Victor Paudel noted that the country’s physical response mechanism relies heavily on manual labour.

“This disaster has exposed our severe lack of modern emergency response technology,” Paudel said. “If we had deployed the advanced rescue systems used in countries like South Korea, India, or China, the search operations would be far further along. Those nations possess extensive technical expertise in rescuing workers trapped in underground coal mines, hydroelectric tunnels, and highway caverns.”

Paudel pointed out that while security personnel on the ground deserve praise for working tirelessly, seeing soldiers clearing tons of thick mud and retrieving bodies with their bare hands proves that Nepal lacks a resilient disaster management system.

The stark operational contrast is visible across the border. In neighbouring China, advanced heavy-lift drones capable of carrying humans have been deployed during flood rescues. In Nepal, however, hydro-project workers remained trapped inside dark water tunnels for four consecutive days due to a total lack of subterranean breaching equipment.

“We still suffer from a critical lack of high-level technology and unified data,” Gurung said. “We do not possess specialised machinery to break into tunnels, nor do we have redundant emergency communication systems. Nationwide, we have only four or five drones capable of lifting payloads between 5 and 20 kilograms. In times like this, the vital importance of satellite internet and heavy rescue hardware becomes painfully obvious.”

Technical analysts also stress that the failure of early warning systems directly caused the heavy loss of life. Neither the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology nor NDRRMA managed to deliver timely, precise warnings to at-risk communities before floodwaters hit.

Analysts often point to the Koshi Barrage as a functional contrast, where continuous water-level telemetry stretching from the upper Koshi basin down to Barahakshetra allows authorities to issue timely warnings. Yet, such monitoring networks remain missing across the torrential rivers of central Nepal.

Rajib Subba, an IT expert and current Election Commissioner, warned that the proliferation of uncoordinated digital forms and competing web portals across various government ministries could backfire, leading to data duplication and operational confusion.

“Government teams are working hard with the limited tools they have, but systemic preparation should have happened long before,” Subba said. “Collecting data on missing persons must be handled strictly through a centralised, single-window system. When different agencies release separate forms and helpline numbers, coordination breaks down and vital information gets scattered.”

Subba, who previously worked on early warning studies for the volatile Tsho Rolpa glacial lake, questioned the sustainability of past investments.

“Why haven’t we installed 24-hour automated monitoring and warning systems along our most dangerous rivers?” he asked. “Despite massive funding from international donor agencies in the name of early warning systems, there is almost no lasting, practical impact on the ground.”

Unregulated settlement expansion and poorly engineered road construction along riverbanks have exacerbated the destruction. While mountain communities historically built homes on high, stable ridges, modern infrastructure has drawn settlements directly down to river margins.

“It is long past time we re-evaluated our entire approach to national development,” Subba said. “In this era of severe climate crisis, if we fail to deploy the right technology in the right places, we will never stop these recurring cycles of multi-billion-rupee destruction.”

Model example of AI use

Amid government shortcomings, private initiatives have attempted to fill the gap. Niraj Bhushal, an assistant IT officer at the Ministry of Finance, independently built the ‘Rasuwa-Bhote Koshi Flood Rescue Portal’. Hosted on GitHub and powered by Grok AI, the open-source platform has become a model for leveraging AI in emergency situations.

Bhushal’s portal automatically collects data every five minutes from official digital feeds published by the NDRRMA, Nepal Police, Nepali Army, and the Rasuwa District Administration Office. The AI model processes missing persons requests submitted via Google Forms, cross-referencing them against lists of rescued survivors to eliminate duplicates.

Furthermore, the system processes satellite imagery provided by the European Union’s UCOS, using AI to map structural damage such as collapsed bridges, buried houses, and blocked road segments.

“I built this portal independently, but I am now collaborating with young volunteers from the civic group Speak Up Nepal,” said Bhushal. “A non-resident Nepali in Australia, Shristi Mainali, provided $210 to power the system, while community chief at SpaceX AI, provided an additional $100 to ensure the servers stay online.”

Before any data is published on the portal, Grok AI assists in fact-checking and verifying the details. “The portal automatically compares missing persons reports with records of recovered individuals,” Bhushal explained. “For official PDF reports released by the Nepali Army and local authorities, I manually convert the data into CSV files before running them through the system.”

To protect citizens from fraudulent links, Bhushal linked his platform directly to official government portals. Clicking the ‘Rescue’ button redirects users to the Prime Minister’s emergency portal, while the ‘Donate’ button routes directly to the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund.

“I work full-time at the Ministry of Finance during the day and devote my nights until 1-2am to updating this portal,” said Bhushal. “I created this so that panicked families wouldn’t have to search frantically across scattered websites during a crisis. AI has proven immensely effective in bringing clarity to this chaotic situation.”