Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) conducted Pre-Cyclone Exercise for the season April-June 2024 under the Chairmanship of Dr. Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General, IMD today in Hybrid mode at Mausam Bhavan, New Delhi.
The Exercise was a part of biennial exercise conducted Pre-cyclone Season And post-Cyclone season to take stock of preparedness of various stakeholders in disaster management. DG IMD said “India has one of the best early warning system and weather forecasting model”. He highlighted the achievements of IMD in the recent times in cyclone forecasting along with continued co-operation from National Disaster management authority, National Disaster response force and Indian armed forces such as Army, Navy Air force, Coast guard etc.
Dr. Mohapatra informed that IMD has developed an indigenous ‘Decision Support System’ with an increased accuracy of more than 50% as compared to predictions in the last decade. He also shared that a Multimodal ensemble system in being deployed to continuous monitor the weather changes and accordingly issue location specific advisories. He also highlighted various mobile apps developed by IMD to issue warnings. He categorically mentioned that Application Programming Interface (API) are made available for other organizations to utilize. “We saw zero causalities during cyclone Biparjoy due to preparedness,” said DG IMD.
During the meeting DG IMD informed that National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) under National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP) developed a Web-based Dynamic Composite Risk Atlas (Web-DCRA) for location specific forecasting are made available to district disaster managers.
As IMD is celebrating the 150th year of its establishment and service to the nation, Dr. Mohapatra expressed his confidence that IMD is ready to scale new heights and reach out to each and every household with weather information at anytime and anywhere “HAR HAR MAUSAM and HAR GHAR MAUSAM” with state-of-art technology and collaboration of academia, R & D institutes, public private partnership and stakeholders.
Shri. Mohsen Shahedi, DIG (Ops & Training) NDRF said that the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) are ready and continuously revisited along with feedback. He appreciated IMD efforts and expressed confidence that NDMA, NDRF and IMD will work co-operatively.
Shri. R K Agarwal, (PA &AO), NCRMP also highlighted the success they achieved in the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation project with co-operation from IMD.
Participants from various disaster management agencies including representatives form Government of all Coastal states and union territories senior officials from Director General Shipping, Director General of Lighthouses and Lightships, National Hydrographic office, Airport Authority of India, Port Authority, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of fisheries, Rural development , All India Radio, Doordarshan News and Press Information Bureau were also present for the exercise.