Ministry officials did not specify the estimated cost and funding pattern of the project.
Global technology giant Google has joined hands with the Union Ministry for Water Resources to improve the country's flood prediction and flood management system. Central Water Commission (CWC), under the ministry, signed a collaboration agreement with Google on Monday which includes projects related to improvement of flood prediction systems, high priority research project to improve flood visualisation and online cultural project on India's rivers.
Ministry officials did not specify the estimated cost and funding pattern of the project.
Using its high resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Google would help to generate flood inundation maps with the forecast inputs of CWC, a government note said. "The information in the form of likely extent and depth of inundation would be disseminated with a lead time of up to 3 days," the note added.
As of 2017 monsoon, CWC's provided trial forecasts, based on rainfall modelling and telemetry stations, with a lead time of three days. The trials for the collaboration would be carried out in the ongoing monsoon season and will be scaled up later.
Government officials said that this project would help them to improve disaster management, flood control planning and regions vulnerable to high-risk from floods.
The agreement comes at a time when Assam and Tripura in the North East are facing floods. According to the Assam State Disaster Management Authority, nearly 5.5 lakh people have been affected by floods across six districts of Nagaon, Hojai, Golaghat, Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj. The floods have killed 14 people till now.
Even as the CWC signed the agreement with Google on Monday, Comptroller and Auditor General of India's audit report last year slammed the dysfunctional flood forecasting stations of CWC. The report had revealed that out of 375 telemetry stations for which information was made available by the Ministry, 222 telemetry stations were non-operational. "As a result, the real time data was not available," the report had said.
The Agreement
The collaboration agreement between the Water Resource Ministry and Google includes projects related to improvement of flood prediction systems, high priority research project to improve flood visualisation and online cultural project on the country’s rivers.
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