National Workshop on Urban Flood Mitigation – “Lessons learnt and Roadmap for future” was organised here by the National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India .
Dr. P. K Mishra, Additional Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister of India was the Chief Guest at the Valedictory Function held today. He released the National Guidelines on School Safety Policy and Hospital Safety. The guidelines on school safety have been formulated with a vision to ensure that all school children across the country remain safe from any kind of disaster risk as they access their right to education. The guidelines on Hospital Safety have been developed with the vision that all hospitals in India will be structurally and functionally safer from disasters. Dr. P.K. Mishra highlighted the need to develop disaster resilient cities to make India disaster resilient and particularly emphasized that the cities which have been selected under the smart city program should pay attention to reduction of urban flood risk.
The workshop was inaugurated yesterday by Shri S. K. Srivastava, Secretary (Coordination), Cabinet Secretariat. The overall objective of the workshop was to carve out a roadmap towards effective mitigation and management of urban floods in our country. Representatives from Nodal Ministries, State Disaster Management Authorities, Secretaries of the urban development departments of flood prone states, Technical Agencies, Municipal Commissioners, District Collectors, Academia and NGOs participated at the workshop. The NDMA Twitter Handle @ndmaindia was launched in partnership with Twitter India during the inaugural ceremony of the workshop.. This partnership would help NDMA to leverage the platform of Twitter both for preparedness and response interventions.
During the course of two days, there were deliberations held upon key issues and concerns related to urban flooding from the perspective of urban land use planning, early warning systems and forecasting, sustainable drainage systems and mitigation of urban floods especially in the context of changing climate. Some of the key recommendations made by stakeholders laid emphasis on the need for preparation of Flood Hazard Risk Vulnerability Atlas, master plan for flood zonation based on natural hydrological features, development of real-time rainfall /cyclone monitoring & flood forecasting system including synergised SOPs, integration of hydro-meteorological data observation network and capacity building for preparedness and response especially at the community level.