A labourer pushes a cart carrying a woman to help her cross a flooded road after heavy monsoon rainfall, in Vadodara, Tuesday.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Patil on Wednesday launched C-FLOOD, a web-based flood forecasting system, designed to sound an alarm at the village level up to two days in advance.
The system has been developed by the Central Water Commission (CWC), the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), and the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC).
It has been made operational under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), jointly steered by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST).
"This is a transformative step in India's flood management journey," Patil said.
The minister also directed the CWC and allied institutions to prepare a national plan for inundation studies and expand coverage to all major river basins.
At present, the system provides real-time flood maps and water level forecasts for the Mahanadi, Godavari, and Tapi river basins using a 2-D hydrodynamic model.
Forecast simulations for the Mahanadi basin are conducted on high-performance computing systems at C-DAC Pune, while outputs for the Godavari and Tapi basins are integrated from models developed by NRSC under the National Hydrology Project.
Patil stressed the importance of integrating the forecasts with the National Disaster Management Emergency Response Portal and improving accuracy through satellite validation and on-ground verification.