National Institute of Disaster Management, Ministry of Home Affairs in collaboration with India Meteorological Department organised a webinar series on “Hydro-Meteorological Hazards Risk Reduction”. The webinar series include four webinars focusing on issues apropos of ‘Thunderstorms and Lightning’, ‘Cloudburst and Floods’, ‘Cyclones and Storm Surges’ and ‘Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events’. The webinar series exhorted on enhancing human capacity in terms of better understanding of Hydro-Meteorological Hazards Risk and effective collaborative actions, by implementing Prime Minister’s 10-point agenda and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, for reducing the risk and enhancing the resilience of affected communities and surroundings.
Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri Nityanand Rai inaugurated the first webinar on “Thunderstorms and Lightning” of the webinar series. In his address, Shri Rai highlighted the major interventions carried out by the Government of India’s departments/agencies for reducing the adverse risks of Hydro-Meteorological disasters. He also emphasised on focusing the collaborative short and long term mitigation and reduction measures to diminish the adverse impacts of these disasters.
The webinar series was addressed by dignitaries including Shri G.V.V. Sarma, Member Secretary, NDMA; Dr. Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Science; Dr. V. Thiruppugazh, IAS, Additional Secretary, NDMA; Major General Manoj Kumar Bindal, Executive Director, NIDM; Dr. Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General, IMD; Shri S N Pradhan, IPS, Director General, NDRF and Prof. Surya Parkash, Head GMRD, NIDM. The renowned speakers also included Shri Sharad Chandra, Director (FFM), CWC; Prof. Kapil Gupta, IIT Bombay; Dr. R. K. Jenamani, Scientist-F, IMD; Shri B. P. Yadav, Head Hydromet, IMD; Dr. D. R. Pattanail, Scientist-F, IMD; Dr. Soma Sen Roy, Scientist-F, IMD; Sh. Anup Karanth, World Bank, and Ms. Sunitha Devi, Scientist E, IMD.
All the above webinar talks are available in You tube in the following links:
- Thunderstorm and Lightening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zv1Rms78dU
- Cyclone and Flood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-P1CZB3krk
- Cyclone and Storm Surges https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TNRFsyuJGs
- Climate change and extreme weather events https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77H2g3K-msM
The key take away from the webinar series consists of the fact that at present occurrences of Hydro-Meteorological events are quite predictable in terms of time and space through the technological capacity of nodal agencies. IMD and NIDM will further enhance the forecasting abilities that will help to acquaint the occurrence of Hydro-Meteorological events in advance with more precision and will aid the relevant stakeholders and communities to take the appropriate prevention and mitigation measures.