Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Ministry of Earth Sciences on Climate Change Risk Assessment Modeling and Multi-hazard Management.
The MoU, on behalf of Amrita School for Sustainable Development, UNESCO Chair on Experiential Learning for Sustainable Innovation and Development, Amrita Centre for Wireless Networks and Application, was jointly signed by Dr. Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, DGM, IMD, PR of India with World Meteorological Organization (WMO) & Member of Executive Council (EC) WMO and Dr. Maneesha Vinodini Ramesh, Dean, School for Sustainable Development, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.
The collaborative thematic research includes six key areas namely:
(a) Develop rainfall threshold models for multi-hazard scenarios like floods, drought, and landslides;
(b) Implement systems for natural hazard monitoring, modeling, and mitigation for developing impact-based early warning systems for selected locations;
(c) Study the impact of climate change and anthropogenic activities on agriculture, water availability and quality, an natural hazards;
(d) Develop geospatial models for variability in groundwater access, water quality, and agriculture crop yield;
(e) Analyze climate change adaptation and mitigation studies to develop a strategic framework for community resilience
(f) Perform geospatial modeling of earth observations by applying state-of-the-art methodologies in the area of big data analysis, statistical downscaling and deep learning modeling.
Dr. P Venkat Rangan, Vice-Chancellor, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, said, “It is going to immensely benefit the Ph.D. scholars of Amrita School of Sustainable Development as well as the young scientists at IMD”.
Dr. Maneesha Vinodini Ramesh, said: “Through this partnership, Amrita and IMD will work towards developing a framework for optimized community-based disaster resilience using emerging technologies and integration of interdisciplinary domains. We plan to work together to develop impact based early warning of landslides by heterogeneous data integration and analysis, and develop an ecosystem that will provide the opportunity to share weather forecasts, early warnings and alerts, and devise a crowdsourced mobile application for multi-hazard event management and early warning. "
The key scope of the collaboration includes training and capacity building and introduction of degree-awarding programs for qualified Ph.D. scholars of Amrita School of Sustainable Development, young scientists at IMD office, and faculty of IMD for a short-term course on climate change risk assessment and management.
