1. Monsoon Floods Early Warning: Monitoring Rainfall and River Levels Upstream LCG DER Mtg. 16 July 2008 UN WFP/ Disaster Risk Reduction

2. Overview Why upstream monitoring important for Monsoon Monitoring, Early Warning, and Preparedness Some easily accessible sources of rainfall and river levels upstream Monitoring for awareness, and potential future analysis

3. Why upstream monitoring is important ?

4. In an average year, 844,000 million cubic metre of water flows into the country during the humid period (May to October) through the three main rivers the ganges, the Brahmaputra-Jamuna and the meghna. This volume is 95% of the total annual inflow. By comparison only about 187,000 million cu m of streamflow is generated by rainfall inside the country during the same period. gangesmeghnarainfall 95% of water from in-flow; 5% from rainfall in Bangladesh Source: Banglapedia

5. Where to find data on river levels upstream? Indian Govmt. : Central Water Commission (CWC)

6. Indian CWC; Sample Outputs Summary Report: Sites Above Warning Level

7. Indian CWC; Sample Outputs

8. Individual Station Level Data: Assam Guwahati

9. Individual Station Level Data: Assam Dibrugarh

12. Upstream River Flow Data: Dartmouth Flood Observatory http://www.dartmouth.edu/~floods/index.html

13. Upstream River Flow Data: Dartmouth Flood Observatory: River Watch Data

14. Rainfall Data Upstream: Indian Met Dept.

15. India: IMD

16. NASA TRMM Rainfall Estimates: Satellite Based

18. Closing Thoughts Monsoon Flood Early Warning and Preparedness can be significantly improved via greater utilization of Upstream Data Data availability is much better than most of us realise Creative approaches (i.e. GIS etc …) should be used to better understand upstream- downstream dynamics; … i.e. significant events upstream, and timing… impacts downstream