The Flood Early Warning System (FLEWS) project is
aimed to provide advance information on flood events as an input to
disaster preparedness. However, FLEWS is not intended to prevent an
impending flood event. FLEWS was initiated as Research and Development
(R&D) project, at the behest of North Eastern Council (NEC) during
2009. It is currently extended to 14 districts in Assam covering both
Brahmaputra and Barak valley on an operational basis.
The FLEWS project has been improving over the years both in terms of
success rate in forecasting flood events (i.e., actual flood occurrence
or rise in river level) and also in improving the lead time (time
difference between the forecast issued and event occurrence). The
success rate of flood prediction has improved from 25% in the year 2009
to 75% in the year 2011. During the current year the success rate has
further improved to 80% for a total of 21 forecasted events in the 14
districts. The maximum lead time of forecast has improved from 7 hours
to 18 hours during the same period.
The FLEWS model is terrain specific and in addition to satellite based
inputs, in-situ data on rainfall and river discharge at critical points
is also required. The Central Water Commission (CWC), Ministry of Water
Resources is mandated for flood forecasts in India and Department of
Space does not have any plan for extending FLEWS to other States
including Odisha.
No comments:
Post a Comment