Climate Resilient Food Security and Sustainable Livelihoods in the Eastern Himalayas Project

Ensuring climate resilient food security and creating sustainable livelihoods in ecologically sensitive production landscapes of Eastern Himalayas

Objective

• This proposal aims to establish a radar hydrology centre of excellence (KAAR) at IIT Madras. KAAR?Knowledge hub for Advanced Analytics in Radar hydrology (KAAR), featuring a rainfall observation radar system as its anchor instrument?provides a unique opportunity for IIT Madras to play a leading role in this cutting-edge research

Description

• Chennai City experiences several major flooding episodes at least once every five years, and at least some parts of it experience flooding every year. Specifically, Chennai ? Vellore ? Krishnagiri ? Cuddalore belt experiences extreme rainfall during North-East Monsoon. In this context, early warning systems for flood forecasting are gaining prominence worldwide. Traditional methods of monitoring/forecasting using rain gages are woefully inadequate, and advanced monitoring techniques such as radar-based estimation/nowcasting of precipitation can provide rapid updates to observation.

Impact

• KAAR can improve the science and provide trained manpower to these institutions., The proposed radar facility in KAAR at IIT Madras is expected to stimulate PhD research for at least 100 scholars over the next 10 years in the areas of AI driven applications in data analytics for urban flooding, now-casting, data assimilation, rainfall microphysics, etc.