Odisha Government to collaborate with RIMES for disaster management

March 17, 2018

The Odisha government will collaborate with Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES) for strengthening its early warning services and enhancing preparedness for management of hazards in state.
The partnership will be forged between Odisha State Disaster Mitigation Authority (OSDMA) and RIMES in field of drought monitoring and early warning for different natural disasters. RIMES is already working with the Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management Authority.

Key Facts

Both entities will ink Memorandum of understanding (MoU) for collaboration and evolve institutional mechanism between them for better coordination. The partnership will help OSDMA to strengthen its quality, prediction ability and response capacity.
RIMES will provide technical support to OSDMA regarding analysis of data to be generated through automatic weather stations being installed in all gram panchayats, validation of forecast, early warning and preparedness for lightening, heat wave, flood, draught and Tsunami.

Significance

It will help OSDMA to engage integrated multi-hazard early warning system to strengthen its prediction and response capability. The collaboration will also strengthen OSDMA for more effective management of natural disasters.
It will also help in transfer of best practices among different countries of world in handling natural disasters. It will also enhance warning response capacities of OSDMA by imparting specialized expert training. It will also help to develop one-stop risk management system for all OSDMA needs-integration of multiple data database/servers.

RIMES

The RIMES is an intergovernmental body registered under United Nations. It is owned and managed by 45 collaborating countries in Asia Pacific and Africa Region. India is chairman of the body. It was established in 2009 and was registered with UN in July 2009.
It operates from its regional early warning centre located at campus of Asian Institute of Technology in Pathumthani, Thailand. It has evolved from efforts of countries in Africa and Asia in aftermath of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Mandate: It seeks to establish regional early warning system within multi-hazard framework for generation and communication of early warning information and capacity building for preparedness and response to trans-boundary hazards. It provides information related to Tsunami and extreme weather conditions. It also acts as a test bed for emerging technologies and help to enhance performance.