ASDMA inks MoU with GSI for Landslide Early Warning System

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaAugust 16, 2024

Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) collaborated with the Geological Survey of India (GSI) on the Implementation of an Experimental Regional Landslide Early Warning System (LEWS) towards combating the menace of landslides in the state.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Gyanendra Dev Tripathi, Chief Executive Officer, ASDMA and Siladitya Sengupta, Deputy Director General, SU: Assam, GSI in Dispur on Friday.

The problem of landslides sometimes goes unnoticed or individual landslides are being dealt with ad-hoc response mechanisms and the problem keeps on recurring every year. In addition to lives lost, large numbers of houses along with infrastructures borne the brunt of the landslides in the hilly terrains of Dima Hasao, Karbi Anglong, Cachar, Karimganj, and Kamrup (M) districts in Assam.

During recent times, one of the major thrust areas in landslide risk reduction is the development of a regional Landslide Early Warning System (LEWS) for a large area with inputs from static landslide susceptibility and hazard maps; dynamic short and long-term rainfall forecasts, etc. In this context, this MoU is being signed between ASDMA and GSI with the objective of institutional cooperation and implementation of an experimental Regional Early Warning Forecast system for making an operational model on landslides for Dima Hasao and Cachar districts of Assam.

It would encompass all over the State in future. GSI informed that, it has launched the “Bhooskhalan” App where people, institutions, government agencies etc can upload incidences of landslides in their respective areas to make it more efficient in predicting and mitigating disasters as cloud sourcing. A portal to get all the updates about landslides in India called GSI’s “Bhusanket” is now available online as well.

Present in the meeting were Smti. Dainia C War, Director, SU: Assam, GSI along with other officials from ASDMA and GSI. Officials of GSI, Kolkata joined online includng DDG(MIVA), GSI, Harish Bahuguna, Director NLFC Akshay Mishra and other officials.