HYDERABAD: With the city expanding in all the four directions, the GHMC is seeking assistance from BITS Pilani-Hyderabad and National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC).
The aim is to study the city’s rainfall pattern to assess new inundation hotspots that may emerge in the future. The rainfall mapping would help in not just having a better disaster action plan but aid in predicting rainfall much more accurately.
However, the researchers blamed the lack of sufficient data for the study and pointed out the need to set up a more automated weather stations (AWS) across the city.
The Principal Secretary (Planning) K Ramakrishna Rao agreed to allocate funds for setting up 207 new AWS. Currently, there are only 37 AWS in the city operated by TSDPS and 7 under IMD-Hyderabad.
Stressing on the need to have a clearer understanding of the flow of drains in the city, to avoid water inundation, Prof Kapil Gupta, an IIT Bombay faculty member chaired a one-day workshop on urban flooding along with representatives from the municipal corporation and other stakeholders.
A senior scientist observed that urban flooding happened primarily because garbage chokes storm water drains.
“60-70% of urban flooding experienced in the city can be avoided if two or three bottlenecks in a particular area are widened or cleaned to allow the free flow of water,” he said.
“If actions are not taken for a Rs 1,200 crore work then a destruction costing Rs 20,000-crore is inevitable,” he said.
LED boards soon
Real-time weather alert LED boards will be set up by GHMC across the city to pass on real-time information on traffic congestion and rainfall.
As part of the early warning system (EWS), traffic congestions, bottlenecks, and rainfall patterns would be displayed on real-time basis.