“ISRO can protect small island states from flooding due to global warming”

“ISRO is gearing up to provide such information to some of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Indian Ocean region,” said the Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, Jitendra Singh, in a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha.

“India, UK, Australia, Fiji, Jamaica and Mauritius have jointly launched an initiative, Infrastructure for the Resilient Island States (IRIS) to provide technical support on disaster resilience of land systems. infrastructure of SIDS, at the 26th Conference of the Parties held in Glasgow, the United Kingdom by the United Nations,” he added.

Singh said IRIS will also support SIDS by facilitating access to existing financial mechanisms for resilient infrastructure development. IRIS will extend its demand-side support to 58 Small Island Developing States (SIDS) across all geographic regions.

ISRO makes predictions of the path, intensity, landing time and location of all cyclones originating in the Indian Ocean using spatial inputs. While Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) is the mandated agency to provide the cyclone forecast warnings, ISRO assists IMD in improving forecasting methodologies and publishing R&D results for the help of all. .

ISRO has carried out a vulnerability assessment of selected states along the Indian coastal region and identified sensitive coastal stretches due to sea level rise. ISRO provides near real-time forecasts of storm surge and storm surge induced flooding for Indian coast during cyclones using satellite observations and numerical model.

Maps of the Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden coral reefs have been published and are updated regularly. A region-specific coral bleaching monitoring system based on sea surface temperature data is hosted on ISRO’s VEDAS geoportal.