The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has asked the people of Chennai to provide details of roads in their neighbourhood that are inundated after the city was lashed by heavy rains.
The Civil Engineering department of IIT Madras will get support from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to advise the Chennai corporation on its future construction plans.
Balaji Narasimhan, Professor of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, in a statement said that the data provided by the people on flooding would help the Chennai corporation improve the design of roads and stormwater drains and their maintenance.
The Civil Engineering professor said that the department is working in association with the corporation and the disaster mitigation agency to put together a real-time system in place.
IIT Madras has requested people to visit https://in.riskmap.org to submit reports. This will lead to activation of the user's Twitter account and ask the user to report flooding. Clicking on the report will activate the map. Users can also upload photographs of sites that are flooded.
IIT Madras is also trying to collect maximum data and would provide recommendations to the Chennai Corporation. The recommendations would also be provided to the state government. This is to get feedback from the Chennai corporation and the state government on the measures and infrastructure development they would make.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has also revived an urban risk map that it had created in 2016-17 for its research purposes.
The Chennai IIT professor in the statement requested maximum participation of people who can provide details from their workplace, homes, or schools from where they see the flooding.
The Civil Engineering department is also working on a simpler version for people who do not have a Twitter account and would be available in a couple of days' time.
Prof Narasimhan also said that once people log in to the data, it will act as an archive and will be used for improving the systems.