GUWAHATI, Aug 02: Floods have claimed 880 lives in Assam in the last five years from 2019 to July 2024 this year, Union minister of state for home, Nityanand Rai said on Thursday.
Replying to a question from Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev, Rai said that as per information furnished by the Assam government, 117 casualties have been reported due to floods in Assam this year.
“The flood fury claims 65 people in 2023, 278 in 2022, 72 in 2021, 190 in 2020 and 157 people in 2019,” Rai said.
The Union minister said the National Remote Sensing Center (NRSC), and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has prepared state-level flood hazard zonation atlas for Assam using satellite data of 1998-2023. This serves as non-structural resources for flood hazard management, for developmental planning.
“North Eastern Space Applications Centre (NESAC)/ Department of Space (DOS) has generated River Atlas consisting of a geospatial database of the Brahmaputra in Assam, including river & drainage network, embankment locations, river gauge locations, road and rail network at 1:5000 scale. This database helps plan and manage water resources,” Rai said.
“NESAC has also identified 271 wetlands, which can be utilized for channelising excess water from rivers, including Brahmaputra, during monsoon season,” he also said.
He further said the NESAC has also developed a Flood Early Warning System (FLEWS) for the Brahmaputra basin in Assam based on numerical rainfall prediction and a physics-based distributed hydrological model in Geographic Information System (GIS) domain. Alerts are provided to the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) with a lead time of 24 to 36 hours.
The Central Water Commission (CWC) issues flood forecasts as a non-structural measure of flood management, to concerned state governments at identified locations. CWC also issues inflow forecasts to identified reservoirs for proper reservoir regulation. CWC prepares 7-day advisory flood forecasts through basin-specific mathematical models using India Meteorological Department (IMD) weather forecast products and near real-time satellite rainfall estimates.
These flood advisories are disseminated through the web portal https://aff.india-water.gov.in/home.php to stakeholders. In addition to this, CWC has 67 hydrological observation sites in the Barak basin and 173 hydrological observation sites in the Brahmaputra basin.
Further, the Assam government has informed that the water resources department has been implementing flood and river bank erosion management schemes as per the recommendation of the Rashtriya Barh Ayog (RBA). The department has been implementing short and medium-term solutions to the perennial problem of flood and erosion in the state. The water resources department of Assam has protected 16.50 lakh hectares of flood-affected land, constructed 4532 km of embankments, 1280 numbers of anti-erosion and town protection works, 122 major sluices and 545 minor sluices and 1047.85 km of raising and strengthening of existing dyke till 2023-24 fiscal.
As per the National Policy on Disaster Management, the primary responsibility for disaster management, including disbursal of relief to the affected people, rests with the state governments concerned. The state governments undertake relief measures in the wake of natural disasters from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF), already placed at their disposal, by the Central government’s approved items and norms.
Additional financial assistance is provided from the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF), as per laid down procedure in case of a disaster of a ‘severe nature’,
which includes an assessment based on the visit of an inter-ministerial central team (IMCT).
The allocation of SDRF to states is based on the recommendations of successive Finance Commissions from time to time, he added.
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