Airtel, MIT plan flood prediction system in Bihar

Soon people of the flood-prone district in Bihar will have an information system which would predict the likely flood threat at least a fortnight before

Published on 10/8/2008 3:26:12 PM
By Chandrabindu

Ranchi: Massive destruction to lives and property in Bihar due to sudden floods will be a thing of past. Soon people of the flood-prone district in the eastern Indian state will have an information system which would predict the likely flood threat at least about 15 days in advance.

Telecom major Bharti Airtel in association with a US-based technical firm Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has agreed to develop a system that could predict early flood a fortnight ahead.

Under the agreement, Airtel would provide data about the water-levels of different rivers at different points and status of embankments to the institute, while MIT would analyse these data by super computers vis-a-vis other references drawn in from satellites. 

Talking to the iGovernment over the mechanism, Airtel's Chief Executive Officer (Bihar and Jharkhand) Shishir M Kumar said, "The parametres of satellite information like snow melting on Himalaya, temperature variations and weather conditions on the mountain, status of embankments, quantum of water flow and layer of silt in the rivers would be counted while exacting the flood prediction." 

Latest updates on rising levels of water in different rivers would be flashed to mobile subscribers in the area and the administration to take precautionary steps.

This follows encouraging result of a pilot project taken up by the mobile company in four districts such as Muzaffarpur, Vaishali, Samastipur and Darbhanga in July 2008.

Airtel Chief Technology Officer Awadhesh Kalia, who led the team of experts from the American institute in Bihar last month, claimed that early prediction system helped the people of Dumri Panchayat of Muzaffarpur to avert floods from Burhi Gandak after the district administration swung into action and strengthened the embankment.

Kumar said that the huge loss to lives and property of the people during the recent floods prompted them to look for minimising the devastation. His concern for recurring floods is also because Kumar hails from flood-prone districts of the state.

However, loss of business due to the floods made the company officials to go in for foreign support to arrest the flood havoc.

A high-level meeting among the officials of Airtel, MIT and an NGO, CRS, was held in New Delhi last week to formalise the deal.

According to Kumar, diversified information of the planning would be collected by regional team and transferred to a central server located in Hyderabad from where it could be downloaded in the MIT super computer for analysis and forecast.

url: http://www.igovernment.in/site/Airtel-MIT-plan-flood-prediction-system-in-Bihar/