NDMA to evolve guidelines to face floods in cities

Hyderabad, Oct 7 (UNI) National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) today initiated steps to evolve a national guideline to tackle the flood situation in urban areas.

Talking to newspersons here, NDMA-member Marri Sasidhara Reddy said the matter would be dealt with separately, as it had serious consequences on the society.

The NDMA would organise a two-day National Workshop on 'Urban Flooding: Scientific, Technological and Management Challenges' on October 11 and 12 at Pune.

Mr Reddy said ten cities in the country were badly affected by floods in 2005 with Mumbai being the worst hit, while 22 cities were flooded in 2006 with Surat being the worst affected.

This year also witnessed severe floods in Kolkata, New Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai.

He said ''we can no longer afford to have our urban centres closing down due to floods, as they would have disastrous consequences.'' The Management had already issued guidelines for the management of earthquakes and chemical (Industrial) disasters. Guidelines for managemnet of cyclones, Medical Preparedness and Mass Casuality Management and Floods would be released shortly.

Expertise of the urban planning specialists should be utilised for preparing plans for new areas and upgrading the existing urban areas, especially in 63 JNNURM cities.

He said though, financial resources were available for these 63 cities from the JNNURM, the technical competence of the city corporations had to be drastically enhanced.

Mr Reddy said if flood management policies and expenditure remain unchanged, the annual losses would increase manifold. There were plans to install 50 to 55 Doppler Radar systems in the country to detect early rains, he added.

He said the themes for discussions at the workshop included scientific and technological tools for management of urban flood monitoring and early warning systems, impact assesment framework and structural measures with emphasis on Hydrologic and Hydraulic components.

UNI