THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the state witnessing a spurt in the number of sunburn and sunstroke cases, the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) is gearing up to introduce devices to monitor harmful UV rays throughout the day in the state to give live warnings to the public. The project, which costs around `10 lakh, is to be implemented in the state by the beginning of March.
The plan is to install UV ray reading meters, which have a sensor and data locker, to stream the live UV ray index on the KSDMA website. With the heat index rising exponentially during summer, KSDMA has prepared a comprehensive Heat Action Plan (HAP) for the state ahead of summer, which is being reviewed by a technical committee. HAP would fix the responsibility of each department and agency under the government and help them combat heatwave.
“We have given a letter to the government to immediately approve the Heat Action Plan so that it could be invoked during summer. We prepared the plan complying with the guidelines of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) which was released in October last year,” said an official. NDMA has given directions to all states to fix the threshold temperature, heat index, etc. “We need two or three years’ data to fix the threshold temperature which would be fixed based on the average maximum temperature recorded in the state over a period of two or three years,” said the official.
According to sources, the state executive committee would approve the heat action plan before this month-end. In 2019, a total of 1,600 heat-related incidents occurred in the state of which 800 were sunburn and sunstroke cases. Last year, the state government declared heat wave as a state-specific disaster following several heat-related incidents.
According to officials, this year the state started experiencing high temperatures very early. “We are expecting a similar summer like last year. We need to be prepared and the installation of UV readers would help us give live UV rays index to the public. Our plan is to give updated data every hour. We will be able to warn the public and issue advisories based on the UV index. Last year, the number of sunburn, sunstroke cases was high. According to experts its because of harmful UV rays and unfortunately neither the IMD nor any other agency in the state has any mechanism to monitor such rays,” said the official.