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Agri-tech firm Leads Connect Services will assess and demarcate the flood prone areas of West Bengal using temporal satellite imageries in the next six months, helping the State government identify the most vulnerable parts and prepare in advance.
“West Bengal being the lowermost riparian State of Ganga-Brahmaputra basins, has both inter-State catchment areas (of 57,624 square kilometer) and international catchment areas (of 34,252 square kilometer) and has no control over influx from the upper catchment areas. The outfall tidal conditions often makes the situation worse and river bank erosion, coastal erosion, water logging, tidal inundation, cyclones/depressions are common phenomena of the State,” said Navneet Ravikar, chairman and managing director of Leads Connect Services, explaining the need for such a study.
The monsoon rainfall normally starts in June and ends in October; the districts in the southern parts of the State experience heavy precipitation, particularly in September and October, he said. During this period, any low pressure or depression in the Bay of Bengal further aggravate the situation, Ravikar said, adding major floods were observed in 1978, 1984, 1991 and 2000.
As per State government data, the flood of 1978 had affected a total area of 30,607 square km and in 2000, 23,971 square km. Flood prone area of the State is estimated at 37,760 square km, which is about 42.55 per cent of the total geographical area (of 88,752 square km) of the West Bengal.
“Through this assessment project, we intend to make indicative flood prone area maps so that the situation in future doesn’t get worse and proactive measures can be taken,” he said. The State government has approved the project recently, he added.
Leads Connect has been in research and development activities in climate change, disaster management, biodiversity, landscape and health analytics since 2018. It is also part of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana project to infuse error-free technology in crop cutting experiments to ascertain the yield in time.
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