Make coastal communities tsunami-ready, advises VP Venkaiah Naidu

​Hyderabad: Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday called upon various scientific organisations in the country to work in synergy and not in silos for improving people’s lives. 

The Vice President was interacting with the Scientists of the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and the National Tsunami Warning Centre here in the city on Friday. Venkaiah Naidu said that he was extremely impressed with its capabilities and the work being carried out by the scientists in the areas of ocean observations, information and advisory services. He told the scientists to work closely with NDMA, coastal states and their disaster management units to make the coastal communities tsunami-ready.

At the National Tsunami Warning Centre, the Vice President enquired about tsunami alerts and the on-going research on tsunami detection. The Director of INCOIS, Satheesh C Shenoi gave an overview of the Tsunami Warning Centre’s activities.

Later, addressing the scientists and researchers, the Vice President complimented INCOIS for issuing Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) Advisories to 5.79 lakh fishermen along the Indian coastline in their local languages. The advisories were reducing their fishing time by 60-70 per cent, while netting two to three times higher profit compared to their searches prior to receiving the advisories, he added. 

The Vice President said that techniques and knowledge base developed at INCOIS was not only helping in improving the quality of the life of fishing community, but also resulting in huge national savings on diesel and valuable human effort, he added. 

The Vice President advised INCOIS to constantly interact with the user agencies like the Coast Guard, Maritime Police and seek their feedback to improve advisories and services. “Glad that the Indian Coast Guard, the agency responsible for the mitigation of oil spills occurring in the seas around us, was now using the oil spill trajectory predictions and working closely with INCOIS to improve the accuracy of predictions,” he said.

The Vice President also suggested to INCOIS to integrate Multi-Hazard vulnerability maps and the 3D GIS maps with tsunami early warnings and storm surge predictions to give a more accurate forecasts of the areas that might get inundated due to tsunami or storm surge. It will help in better management of the disasters and mitigate the suffering of the coastal population, he added.

The Vice President also wanted INCOIS to popularise ‘Sagar Vani’, an integrated information dissemination system, among the fishermen and other users so that the ocean information and alerts could be reached to a large number of people. Deputy Chief Minister Mohammad Mahmood Ali and others were present on the occasion.