Monsoon School on Urban Floods - 2014

About:

The Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore had organized a one-week Monsoon School on "Urban Floods" during August 4 - 9, 2014, as one of the outreach activities in the research project entitled, Urban Flood Management in India: Technology Driven Solutions, sponsored by ITRA (Information Technology Research Academy), Ministry of Information and Technology, Government of India. The School comprised of lectures and tutorials by experts, covering topics of urban meteorology, urban hydrology, radar and remote sensing analysis of rain events, big data analysis for urban processes, engineering practices and post-flood responses. Group discussions were arranged to bring out the relevance of the state-of-the-art tools and methodologies for managing urban floods in Indian cities. The School targeted the practicing engineers and young researchers working with government or private bodies and educational institutes.

Venue for the Lectures:

GJ Hall, Dept of Civil Engg

Venue for Tutorials:

Conference Room/Computer Room, Dept of Civil Engg

Overview of the event:

The event consisted of 34 participants across India and neighboring countries (Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan) joined the workshop. Dr Binayak Mohanty from Texas A&M University, Dr Dev Niyogi from Purdue University and Dr Bhanu Neupane from UNESCO, Paris joined the workshop as resource persons. From IISc Bangalore, Prof Pradeep Mujumdar, Prof Mohan Kumar, Prof M Shekhar and Prof Nagesh Kumar gave lectures on various sessions of the workshop on different topics relating to urban floods. Dr Arun Pande from ITRA attended first two days of the workshop.

The participants of the workshop came from different backgrounds. Young faculty members from different educational institutions including IIT Roorkee, NIT Warangal, NIT Raipur, University of Varoda, Kurukshetra University etc; scientists from NIH Roorkee, ISRO; engineers from Mumbai municipality, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, officials from Nepal, KSNDMC Bangalore, research scholars and graduate students from different education institutes including IIT Mumbai, BITS Pilani, IISc Bangalore joined the workshop. This versatile group of participants helped to develop a very dynamic learning process through the workshop.

Each day of the workshop was divided into two sessions. In the morning sessions, lectures were conducted and in the afternoon sessions, tutorials, short assignments on the topics covered were given, group discussions were arranged etc. A visit to KSNDMC was organized in 6th Aug in the afternoon session of the workshop. All the participants visited KSNDMC office where the officials described the functioning of telemetric rain gauges and other weather monitoring instruments to them.