The Union Territory of J&K has joined hands with the UK Space Agency’s programme for collaborative projects on ‘Impact Based Flood Forecasting using Earth Observation (EO) based Information’. This is a significant step in putting an impact-based flood forecasting mechanism in place.
Key Points
- The UK Space Agency has established a new programme “National Space Innovation Programme (NSIP)”.
- The programme supports collaborative projects between UK organizations and international partners.
- HR Wallingford in association with Sayers & Partners (SPL), Oxford University, and D-Orbit (UK) will undertake the project.
- Impact-based forecasting is the next step of flood forecasting services.
- Impact-based forecasts of flood risks will be helpful for effective and efficient contingency planning as well as swift evaluation of severity for a necessary response.
- The international association will help in analyzing previous flood events and identifying relationships between predicted floods and their impact.
- J&K does not have any such effective impact-based flood forecasting mechanism.
- This collaboration of the UT with the UK Space Agency’s programme will help predict flood risks, in terms of building collapse, expected loss to life, infrastructure disruption, injuries to people, and economic damage.
The framework will be capable of being linked to any existing or future flood flow forecasting system. The UT Government will not have to bear any expenses on the project.