World Bank Board approves USD 175 million National Hydrology Project of India

World Bank Board approves USD 175 million National Hydrology Project of India The World Bank Board on 16 March 2017 approved the USD 175 million National Hydrology Project to strengthen capacity of institutions to assess water situation in their regions. This loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) of World Bank will have a 6-year grace period and a maturity of 23 years. The project is aimed at assisting the institutions in reducing the vulnerability to recurring flood and droughts. Highlights of the National Hydrology Project
• The National Hydrology Project will scale up the successes achieved under Hydrology Project-I and Hydrology Project-II to cover the entire country including the states of Ganga and Brahmaputra-Barak basins.
• For the first time, under HP-I and HP-II, real-time flood forecast systems integrated with weather forecast in Krishna and Satluj-Beas river systems will give reservoir managers an accurate picture of the water situation in their region.
• Apart from benefitting the states in further upgrading and completing their monitoring networks, it will also help new states to better manage water flows from the reservoirs.
• National Flood Forecasting Systems with an advance warning system and reservoir operation systems as well as water resources accounting in river basins will be included under the project.
• It will have the potential to help communities to build resilience against possible uncertainties of climate change.
• It will also help the states to monitor all the important aspects of the hydro-meteorological cycle and adopt the procedures to measure how much rain or snow has fallen right in the catchments of rivers, how much silt has built up, and how much water will reach the reservoir.
• Sensors in the field will instantly transmit this information to data centres through satellite or mobile phone technology to form a clear picture of the water situation unfolding in the region.