Dr.  Vikram  Kumar
Scientist, Bihar Mausam Sewa Kendra, Planning and Development Department, Govt. of Bihar,  India

Title: Strengthening of flood forecasting and early warning system using Low-cost sensors

Abstract:

Asia is the most disaster-prone region in the world and home to large river systems. Many of the largest rivers emanate from the Himalayas and are fed by glacial and snow melting as well as monsoonal rain. Building resilience to natural disasters is one of the most pressing challenges for achieving sustainable development in this disaster-prone region. Floods are one of the most frequent natural disasters in Asia, with devastating impacts on the poor and vulnerable populations who live along river basins and are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. Flooding in these regions is caused by either trans-boundary river water flow or river overflow due to prolonged rainfall that result in overflowing rivers and inundated lowland plains. Many of the large-scale floods during the year were transboundary in nature, and these have significant impacts, especially on the poor and vulnerable populations dependent on agriculture. Early warning systems are an important component of disaster risk management strategies and can play an important role in reducing disaster risk. In contrast to flood forecasting systems, which assess flood risk, the main purpose of early warning systems is to issue warnings when a flood is imminent or already occurring. A warning system cannot be effective unless the end users of the warning know what to do with the information. Early warning is highlighted as a major component of disaster risk reduction in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. The framework emphasizes that early warning systems must be centered on the needs of people which means that warnings must be timely and understandable to those at risk. Improving the forecast lead time by 1 hour can increase the current savings by 1.83 times. Thus strengthening the existing or developing new flood early warning system (EWS) can besides reducing damages due to floods, the EWS is successful in improving social capital in the downstream communities and inform the policy-making of state to securing further funding. Future research is required to counter, how climate change affects the severity and occurrence of floods in coming years.

Biography:

Vikram Kumar is presently working as Scientist in Hydrology Division, Govt of Bihar before that he served more than 3 year in the capacity of Head of Department of Civil Engineering atat Govt Engineering College Gaya in Bihar. He is Graduated in Civil Engineering from Government Engineering College Kota, affiliated to Rajasthan University. Later he got Master’s degree with honours from IIT BHU. Did his doctoral from IIT Roorkee on the field of Hydrology on topic Himalaya hydrological processes. He had also served as Head of Department in Civil Engineering at Poornima Group of Institution, Jaipur for 2 years. 

Dr. Kumar had also served in South Korean based MNC as a Planning Engineer and during his tenure he performed his responsibilities very well. He has written 6 number of text books on various Civil Engineering subjects. The books are appreciated by students as well as teachers. He has also published over 25 research paper in Different peer reviewd Journal and conferences. He had completed 2 funded projects. Young Scientist by DST, Govt of India, Young Faculty Avard, DAAD Fellow are also in his credits. 

His broad research area of interest is in Field Instrumentation, Hydrological Modeling, Flood Forecasting and Water Resources and Management. He has a teaching experience of more than 10 years in different institutions.