Govt. launches National Landslide Forecasting Centre, Portal and App
Science and Technology
4 min read
To mitigate the hazards of landslides and provide early warning to the people affected by them, the government of India has set up the National Landslide Forecasting Centre at Kolkata and launched the Bhusanket Web Portal and Bhooskhalan Mobile App.
The government plans to set up a string of landslide forecasting centres in all the landslide-prone states by 2030.
Inauguration of National Landslide Forecasting Centre, Portal and App
The National Landslide Forecasting Centre, Bhusanket Web Portal and Bhooskhalan Mobile App were inaugurated by the Union Minister of Coal and Mines, G. Kishan Reddy, on 19 July 2024 at Kolkata.
The National Landslide Forecasting Centre has been set up at the Geological Survey of India (GSI) Dharitri Campus, Salt Lake City, Kolkata, West Bengal.
Function of the Landslide Forecasting Center, Web portal and App
The advanced National Landslide Forecasting Center, equipped with the latest technology, will provide early warning information to the local administration, update landslide inventories, and integrate real-time rainfall and slope instability data for enhanced forecasting accuracy.
The Web Portal, Bhooskhalan Mobile App, will enable quick dissemination of daily landslide forecasts and allow stakeholders to share and update spatial and temporal information on landslide occurrences.
Landslide and Landslide prone areas in India
A landslide is the mass movement of earth, rocks, or debris down a mountain slope due to the pull of gravity. It can happen suddenly or slowly over a long period.
The most landslide-prone areas in India are the Himalayan regions, followed by the Northeastern hill ranges, the Western Ghats, the Nilgiris, the Eastern Ghats and the Vindhyans mountain range.
The landslide in the Northeastern region, especially the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, in Sikkim, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya, Assam, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, pose chronic problems, causing recurring economic losses worth billions of rupees,
That is why the first National Landslide Forecasting Center, which will cater to the Northeastern region, has been set up in Kolkata.
About the Geological Survey of India
The Geological Survey of India (GSI) was set up in 1851 to find coal-bearing areas for the Railways.
Currently, the main function of the Geological Survey of India is to create and update the national mineral resource assessment and geoscientific information.
It comes under the Union Ministry of Mines.
Headquarters: Kolkata
Regional Offices of GSI: Lucknow, Jaipur, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Shillong and Kolkata
Director General of GSI: Janardan Prasad
