PremiumScientific understanding of the processes behind disasters has grown immensely over the past 50 years, and there is need for strengthening further international collaborations like the Indo-UK initiative to fight such disasters in future
New Delhi: Union minister Jitendra Singh on Tuesday stressed on the need to have mitigation strategies to minimize human consequences of natural disasters.
Addressing the inaugural session of the Indo-UK workshop on ‘Earth Hazards’, the minister said that the Ministry of Earth Sciences has adopted pro-active stance and established 37 new seismological centres in the last two years. “India now has 152 such centres for extensive observation facilities generating huge data base for outcome-oriented analytics."
In the next five years, 100 more such centres will be opened across the country for improving real-time data monitoring and collection. “India is moving closer to playing a critical role in seismological advancement and understanding."
He said that there was critical need for fundamental research on physical processes that lead to failure of brittle layers beneath the crust and sub-crust, to develop low-cost solutions to identify and quantify the geo-hazards over the vast regions and devise mitigation strategies that are appropriate to widely varying – and rapidly evolving – political, social, and economic contexts.
“Scientific understanding of the processes behind disasters has grown immensely over the past 50 years, and there is need for strengthening further international collaborations like the Indo-UK initiative to fight such disasters in future," the minister added.
Singh said that deep collaboration of Indian scientists with UKRI counterpart on Solid Earth Hazards will enrich understanding to further develop a way out for mitigating the risk associated with natural disasters like earthquakes, landslides, and tsunami, etc.
“With the growing consciousness of the interconnected physics behind the earth processes and its interior dynamics, scientists are enthusiastically pushing frontiers of joint research in different spheres of earth sciences," he added.
The UK delegation was led by Christina Scott, British deputy high commissioner to India.
The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) has constituted a team of scientists representing National Centre for Seismology (NCS) New Delhi, Borehole Geophysical Research Laboratory (BGRL) Karad, National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS) Thiruvananthpuram, and National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), Goa, to interact with the team of visiting experts/scientists from the UK during the workshop in the line to develop collaborations and frame unique research projects on solid earth hazards.
During the two-day workshop experts/scientists from both the countries will have deliberations on different aspects of the solid earth hazards.