‘Urban Hydrology’ to tackle flooding

Rajahmundry: AP cities are witnessing drowning of people including that of children in open nalas even for a brief spell of rainfall due to poor construction design and maintenance of storm water drainage system.

Growing urbanisation and rapid increase in the size of population over a period of time in these cities are dwarfing the storm water drainage system. To cope with these issues, National Institute of Hydrology has come up with ‘Urban Hydrology’ which  studies  the course of water, measuring its quantum and possible impact in the vicinity.

The NIH uses high end gadgets like Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge which can measure rainfall in a given area for every minute. The NIH experts install these gadgets in the requisite area to measure the quantum of rainfall and water level periodically and get updates at regular intervals. In case of a storm water drain, they can install requisite number of AWLRs in a specified area and can even forecast the quantum of flood water likely to affect  certain low-lying area in advance and alert the concerned civic authorities to evacuate the people to safety. Failure to avail urban hydrology in the cities is resulting in many lives being lost. In a recent case, a six year old girl Aditi was washed away in an open nala  in Visakhapatnam on September 25, 2015 and her body was found 45 km away in a beach.

National Institute of Hydrology’s Deltaic Regional Centre head  Dr Y.R. Satyaji Rao said, “Urban hydrology is the need of the hour to tackle urban flooding to save the lives and protect the assets. It helps us to redesign the storm water drainage system and it should also be incorporated in the master plan of cities.”