Dashboard, app for early warnings for floods to be ready soon: Chennai Corporation

Greater Chennai Corporation developing early warning system for monsoons, including 'Flood-o-metre' and public toilet monitoring dashboard.

The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) is nearly done developing a dashboard and an app for an early warning system for monsoons with the in-house developer at no additional cost, official sources confirmed. The system may not be directly available to the public but only to officials, the sources added.

This is still not added to the Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) of the Corporation but will soon be a part of the wider network, they said.

The app includes a ‘Flood-o-metre’, created in collaboration with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS). “Inspired by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, about 40 devices are being readied to act as ‘Flood-o-metres’ on a pilot basis. Forty vulnerable locations across the city are monitored for water level. All the data related to warnings and floods are collected and fed into an application for developing a dashboard,” an official stated.

Highly vulnerable areas, where over four feet of water was stagnant for more than two days, are being considered for monitoring.

“Rainfall forecast for every hour, temperature ranges, storm formation, earthquake warnings, current weather conditions, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, sea-level pressure, sun and moon rise and setting, cloud patterns etc., from the IMD can be checked on the app. This info would be displayed ward, zone and district-wise, add can be customised depending on what the user wants data on,” the official stated.

Information related to needs, including shelters and Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHC), are expected to be included in this for facilitating immediate rescue. Colour changes to indicate normal or dangerous situations will also be displayed.

Further, another dashboard to monitor public toilets — how many male and female toilets are maintained, the availability of basic amenities such as tissues, bins, water, average use count etc. — is also being developed at the ICCC.