By Kasturi Das
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In August, the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, along with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), launched a fully automated web-based flood warning system for Guwahati. Every year without fail, flash floods ravage the capital city of the Indian state of Assam. It has been a perpetual occurrence for decades, with no solution in sight.
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How will FEWS work?
FEWS has been developed to deal exclusively with urban drainage, river and overland flow combined. It uses advanced hydrological models to provide warnings with a lead time of 72 hours. It uses the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) hourly forecast data of precipitation to simulate a hydrodynamic model to predict the water level, and generate spatial flood maps.
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“The system is developed with an inbuilt urban drainage to predict flood at street-level accuracy. The flood level and hotspot areas can be visualised over Google Maps which will help in identifying flood-affected areas, disaster preparedness and management of urban flooding-related issues such as traffic disruption, providing relief and recovery and managing stormwater,” said Prasoon Singh, the project lead of FEWS, and an associate fellow of the Earth Science and Climate Change division at TERI.