HYDERABAD: Telangana government’s disaster management wing which does not even have its own website, can learn lessons from technology driven measures taken up by Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Center (KSNDMC) for tackling urban floods. KSNDMC installed a network of telemetric rain gauges in areas of Bengaluru that are vulnerable to flooding which give real time updates of rainfall and alert authorities whenever the amount of rainfall reaches danger levels that can cause flooding.
KSNDMC also started a website named ‘Varuna Mitra’ which gives real time updates of rainfall in various areas of city, rainfall intensity and area wise flood warning. It also has a toll free 24-hour telephone service on which people can call and get these details. Bengaluru is the first city in India to have such a system.
Not just this but the next step in Bengaluru will be real-time monitoring of storm water drains. Indian Institute of Science has developed sensors which it is currently testing in its campus, that can be used inside storm water drains, These sensors will give information in real time about the volume of water flowing in storm water drains and will alert the authorities if the volume increases to such a level that it can cause flooding.
Swati Vemula, a PhD scholar from BITS Pilani Hyderabad who is working on a storm water management project in Hyderabad as part of a Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology project, says, “Such a system is required in Hyderabad as well so that the government authorities and also public can be ready to face the floods before it occurs and leaves them helpless. The Bengaluru system can be adopted in Hyderabad as well which I will be suggesting to GHMC along with other suggestions developed as part of the project.”