The largest earthquakes in this series caused a wide swath of death and destruction in Nepal and within adjacent India, China, and Bangladesh. Some mountain villages were shaken to complete destruction, buried by avalanches and landslides, or destroyed by powerful avalanche and landslide air blasts. The remote locations and blocked roads and rivers meant that ground crews could not immediately access many Himalayan valleys, and aircraft were insufficient for rapid assessment.

A satellite-based approach was adopted to examine the vast damaged region. Satellite imagery was provided by NASA, DigitalGlobe, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), Planet Labs, Spot Image, and the China National Space Administration, including imagery triggered by the International Charter: Space and Major Disasters. A “Volunteer Group” of analysts from nine nations was organized by the University of Arizona under the auspices of Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) initially to assess priority hazard situations and then to build a landslide inventory.