Mines Minister launches National Landslide Forecasting Centre in Kolkata

Kolkata, July 19 (IANS) Union Minister of Coal and Mines, G. Kishan Reddy, inaugurated the National Landslide Forecasting Centre at GSI’s Dharitri Campus in Salt Lake near here on Friday.

The Minister also launched the Bhusanket Web Portal and Bhooskhalan Mobile App for disseminating information on landslide hazards.

The programme was attended by senior officials from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and various disaster management agencies.

The National Landslide Forecasting Centre (NLFC) is a pioneering initiative aimed at landslide hazard mitigation in the country. Soon after the inauguration, residents of Kalimpong, Darjeeling, and Nilgiri districts will benefit from live forecasting report to be shared with them from July 20 onward.

It will in due course issue early warning bulletins for all landslide-prone states, operationalising the regional Landslide Early Warning System (LEWS) nationwide by 2030. Equipped with advanced technology, the NLFC will provide early information to the local administrations and communities, update landslide inventories, and integrate real-time rainfall and slope instability data for enhanced forecasting accuracy.

The launch of the Bhusanket Web Portal marks a major step toward disaster risk reduction. This portal will facilitate the dissemination of relevant data and information on landslide hazards, initiating short-range and medium-range landslide forecasting in the country.

Integrated with the portal, the user-friendly Bhooskhalan Mobile App will enable quick dissemination of daily landslide forecasts and allow the stakeholders to share and update spatial and temporal information on landslide occurrences.

The app is available on the Bhusanket portal and will soon be available on Google Play Store.

In his address, the Minister emphasised GSI’s critical role in disaster management, particularly in landslide hazard mitigation.

He also commended the GSI officials for their dedication to establishing the NLFC and urged them to work diligently towards fulfilling the nation’s mineral and disaster management needs, aligning with the vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat and achieving Viksit Bharat by 2047.

Earlier in the day, Kishan Reddy chaired a review meeting at GSI to assess the ongoing activities and achievements of the institute.

During this meeting, he underscored GSI’s pivotal role in baseline data generation, augmenting the mineral resources of the country and policies, particularly focusing on landslides, and congratulated the officials for their tireless efforts in advancing geological studies and mineral exploration.

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