Landslip Warning System

Subject – Disaster Management

Context – NGRI proposes landslip warning system

Concept –

The Council Of Scientific And Industrial Research -National Geophysical Research Institute (CSIR-NGRI) has launched an ‘Environmental Seismology’ group to develop a ‘Landslide and Flood Early Warning System’ for the Himalayan region based on real-time monitoring with dense seismological networks, coupled with satellite data, numerical modelling and geomorphic analysis.
This would enable a crucial warning several hours prior, which will save human lives and property.
The need for such an early warning system was necessitated following February’s rockslide flood disaster in Chamoli (Uttarakhand), where a steep glacier on the Nandadevi peak in Garhwal Himalaya got detached, causing a major avalanche and inducing flash floods in the Rishi Ganga and Alaknanda rivers. It killed several persons downstream and caused severe damage to two power plants.
Scientists at the NGRI in collaboration with German scientists at GFZ, Potsdam, used Spectrogram analysis techniques to identify and separate out various phases, including that of the rockslides, debris flow and flooding of the event.
The broadband seismic network enabled a complete spatiotemporal tracking of the entire disaster sequence using polarisation and back-tracing approaches.