To cut response time in crisis, BMC upgrades map of Mumbai's relief facilities

MUMBAI: Learning a lesson from the floods that ravaged Kerala last year, the BMC's disaster management cell is all set for a major upgrade. Currently, the civic body decides manually on how to mobilize its resources in a disaster. Now, it is working on creating a system that will instead take a decision on what needs to be done in case of a calamity.

This, officials said, is also a Hazard Vulnerability Risk Assessment which they have felt that any major city like Mumbai needs to have. It will help cut down the response time to a great extent in times of a disaster as there will be no human interference. "At the time of Kerala floods which hit that state last year, a major problem the authorities faced, we learned, was that basic amenity spaces like temporary shelters, dispensaries and such facilities were not easily identified and so it took a while to be made available to the public," said a civic official.

The civic disaster management cell is now working on the geographic information system to map various units like hospitals, fire brigade stations, municipal and private schools, colleges, libraries, malls, slum clusters, temporary shelters, civic and government buildings, offices, sewerage operation lines and storm water drain lines.

The mapping of these units is under way since six months. Civic officials said that even though they already had a database of various units in the city, the same is being augmented. "The data will be placed upon the city's existing map and in a disaster, the system would point to all essentials like vulnerable areas that may be affected. Like, if it's a fire, which are nearby clusters that are likely to be affected, the nearby fire stations, temporary shelters available where affected people can be shifted and hospitals in the vicinity," said an official.

Civic officials said that they have tried their best to generate as rich a database as possible and work on it. "Surveyors were also sent on ground. They have so far surveyed around 25,000 properties. The same is also in the process of being mapped," said an official.

"Apart from it, the BMC has also started going back into its own directory when the DMC was not system-based and all information from the manual register is being fed online," said an official.

Additional municipal commissioner I A Kundan said, "We are upgrading our system to minimise response time during crises. We want to ensure that in case of a disaster on our disaster management computer screens we can check available resources near the affected spot and accordingly draw our plan without any delay. For instance, check our fire engine locations when required, so that we can know the location of closest fire engine and divert it to the spot."

BMC plans to roll out the system before the monsoon.