Disaster Management GS Paper III (Disaster Management) by Rajvardhan Sir

Model Answer

Question #1. While hazards like Tsunami cannot be prevented from occurring, mitigation planning can reduce the impact of such events when they do occur. Discuss the measures taken by India for mitigating the impact of Tsunami.  Suggest measures required in coastal areas for protection against Tsunami.

Approach:

• Briefly introduce  by explaining the vulnerability due to Tsunami
• Measures taken by India for mitigating the impact of Tsunami
• Challenges to Tsunami Risk management in India
• Actions Required in Coastal Areas for Protection against Tsunami  mitigation
• Conclusion

Hints:

Tsunamis are extremely dangerous to coastal life and coastal property. They produce unusually strong currents, rapidly flooding the land and causing great damage to coastal property and life. Tsunamis not only destroy human life, but also have a devastating effect on animal and plant life and other natural resources. A tsunami changes the landscape. It uproots trees and plants and destroys animal habitats.

Disaster mitigation

Disaster mitigation measures are those that eliminate or reduce the impacts and risks of hazards through proactive measures taken before an emergency or disaster occurs. Disaster mitigation measures may be structural or non-structural. Mitigation activities should incorporate the measurement and assessment of the evolving risk environment. Activities may include the creation of comprehensive, pro-active tools that help decide where to focus funding and efforts in risk reduction.

Measures taken by India for mitigating the impact of Tsunami

• The Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting System (DOARS) was set up in the Indian Ocean post 2014.
• The Indian government plans to set up a network with Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand etc.
• A National Tsunami Early Warning Centre, which has the capability to detect earthquakes of more than 6 magnitude in the Indian Ocean, was inaugurated in 2007 in India.
• Set up by the Ministry of Earth Sciences in the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, the tsunami warning system would take 10-30 minutes to analyze the seismic data following an earthquake.
• The Government of India has put in place an Early Warning System for mitigation of such oceanogenic disasters under the control of Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad.
• A state-of-the-art early warning centre was established with the necessary computational and communication infrastructure that enables reception of real-time data from sensors, analysis of the data, generation and dissemination of tsunami advisories following a standard operating procedure.
• Seismic and sea-level data are continuously monitored in the Early Warning Centre using custom-built software application that generates alarms/alerts in the warning centre whenever a pre-set threshold is crossed. Tsunami warnings/watches are then generated based on pre-set decision support rules and disseminated to the concerned authorities for action, as per pre-decided standard operating procedure. The efficiency of this end-to-end system was proven during the large under-sea earthquake of 8.4 M that occurred on September 12, 2007 in the Indian Ocean.

Challenges to Tsunami Risk management in India

• Lack of easily accessible tsunami documentation and paleo-tsunami studies for better understanding of past tsunami events for improved risk assessment;
• Lack of high resolution near-shore bathymetric and topographic data will prove to be a limiting factor for inundation models;
• Inadequate community awareness on tsunami risk and vulnerability.
• Lack of people's participation in strengthening disaster preparedness, mitigation and emergency response in the coastal areas.
• Lack of documentation of traditional knowledge for tsunami risk management.

Actions Required in Coastal Areas for Protection against Tsunami mitigation

• Tsunami is the most unpredictable natural disaster in the world and to prevent it is next to impossible. Hence, the only way to effectively mitigate the impact of a tsunami is through an early warning system.
• Revision of Coastal Zone Regulation Act in wake of tsunami storm surge hazards and strict implementation of the same. This responsibility may be given to respective state disaster management authorities. A special task force for this purpose may be constituted comprising the representatives from various departments of the government and other relevant organizations (e.g. Departments of Forestry, Fisheries, Soil Conservation, Town and Country Planning Organization, Navy, Coast Guard, IMD,ISRO/DOS etc.)
• A state of the art EOC may be established within the authority for monitoring purposes.
• Initiating disaster watch (bay watch) safety measures along important beaches in the country, providing round the clock monitoring, warning, lifeguard facilities & creation of a website for missing persons etc.
• Unlike earthquakes, the number of Tsunami events are far less to have a comprehensive database of various hazard parameters. Since most of the database needs numerical simulation, it would be appropriate to generate coastal maps of multi-hazard risk, land use planning, natural drainage contours, dynamics of river basins etc. on a comprehensive GIS platform. With ground level benchmarking of field data, several satellite imageries could be processed for extracting and generating the necessary thematic maps for the Tsunami hazard assessment
• Organization of sensitization workshops on cyclone/tsunami risk mitigation in various states for senior bureaucrats / politicians for these states
• Organizing drills on regular basis to check the viability of all plans and to check the readiness of all concerned
• Training of professionals, policy planners and others involved with disaster mitigation and management programmes in the states

Conclusion:

It is important to adopt the integrated multi-hazard approach with emphasis on cyclone and tsunami risk mitigation in coastal areas. Recently, Odisha has achieved a milestone in disaster management through community based approach. Venkatraipur in Ganjam and Noliasahi in Jagatsinghpur have been recognised by UNESCO-IOC as Tsunami-Ready Communities. This bottom-up, participatory approach can make community members more receptive to new knowledge and information presented to them. This type of attitude can also be gradually changed by involving members of the local community in decision-making processes such as planning national disaster management plans or even designing awareness programmes.

Question #2. Sharp increase in cloudburst incidents in the recent years in India is likely to be an impact of climate change. Discuss. Suggest measures to deal with a cloudburst.

Q2. Sharp increase in cloudburst incidents in the recent years in India is likely to be an impact of climate change. Discuss. Suggest measures to deal with a cloudburst.

Approach:

• Briefly introduce by defining cloud burst and link it to context of the question
• Explain increased cloud burst ,Global warming and monsoon patterns
• Explain the reasons and impact of cloud burst
• Conclusion

Hints:

The cloudburst is a localised weather phenomena representing highly concentrated rainfall over a small area lasting for few hours. This leads to flash floods/ landslides, house collapse, dislocation of traffic and human casualties on large scale. Meteorologists say the rain from a cloudburst is usually of the shower type with a fall rate equal to or greater than 100 mm (4.94 inches) per hour. Frequent cloud bursts are increasingly affecting life of Indian people especially in the Himalayan foothills.

Increase in cloudbursts

• There has been a steep increase in cloudbursts-like events where rainfall has exceeded 100 mm per hour (which is just an indicative definition). Days with cloudburst-like events in the Himalayas saw a steep increase from an average of five days per year between 2001 and 2005 to over 15 days per year between 2006 and 2013.
• While high-intensity rainfall events have increased, there has also been a fall in the annual number of days with rainfall in India. The average number of rain days has fallen from around 80 per year in early 2000s to 65 in the past 10 years.

Global warming and monsoon patterns

• While global temperature is recorded to have increased by about 0.8°C in recent decades, the increase has been greater in regions at higher altitudes. This is especially ominous considering that mountains are not only affected by climatic patterns but also contribute to the changing climate owing to the enormous deposits of water they hold in the form of glaciers, ice and snow.
• Nowhere is this situation truer than in the Himalayan-Tibetan massif, the world’s highest region, where warming of 0.15-0.6°C per decade has been observed in the past three decades.
• The warming, according to some scientists, has wreaked havoc on the monsoonal patterns in the Himalayas.

Reasons - anthropogenic and climate change

• In recent years, anthropogenic factors such as population, deforestation, land-use change and emissions due to urbanisation have been implicated in extreme weather events in the Himalayas.
• Add to this climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other mountain range.
• Glacial lakes formed by melting glaciers are constrained by ice dams. Since the Indian summer monsoon coincides with the melting of glaciers, ice dams are weakened by the additional stress of the monsoons and are prone to bursting. A flash flood in Kargil in May 2016 was attributed to this.

 Himalayan vulnerability to natural disasters

• The geography of a place makes it vulnerable to cloudbursts—which are a convective phenomenon producing sudden high-intensity rainfall over a small area.
• Due to its topography, geology, propensity for tectonic activity and ecological fragility, the Himalayan region becomes prone to rapidly changing weather at micro-levels.
• Recently cloudburst caused flash floods in Jammu’s Kishtwar district. Many people died and some reported missing in two separate flash floods in Kullu and Lahaul-Spiti districts of Himachal Pradesh.
• There has been a rise in short span high intensity rain occurrences (mini cloud bursts) along the west coast of India and along the foothills of Western Himalayas between 1969 and 2015 according to “Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region

Suggested measures

• Managing wastewater over ground: The cloudburst concretisation plans are based on a few simple principles. The main principle is to keep the water on the surface and control it rather than installing large, expensive pipes underground. Instead, cloudburst streets will collect and transport the water away from the vulnerable, low-lying areas.
• Multi-functional spaces are key elements in the plan, such as parks and playgrounds that can be flooded during heavy rainfall but in dry weather serve as recreational spaces for the citizens
• We need a dense rain gauge network and hourly rain data to document all cloud burst and mini cloudburst events.
• Global need for holistic urban planning

• Modify homes and businesses to help them withstand floods.
• Construct buildings above flood levels.
• Tackle climate change.
• Protect wetlands and introduce plant trees strategically.

Conclusion:

India needs to have a cloudburst management plan as part of the Copenhagen climate adaptation plan. Some of the measures suggested under the plan include steps to separate stormwater from wastewater, and diverting drain water to the sea through roads, canals or urban waterways, and subterranean tunnels.