by Manu Parulekar, India on 7/27/2009
This is some kind of a joke at the cost of the thousands who are dead and millions who suffered in 2005 and continue to do so during every monsoon even today. It has taken four years for this permission to be granted. Reasons- ''Security Concerns''. Let us remember that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai city on 26/11 did so without the aerial photographs or the high resolution ''contour data'' and they killed 130. The Mumbai floods in 2005 killed 1062 and left tens of thousands homeless.
A civilian is bound to suspect motives other than ''national security'' that play hand in such delayed decisions on part of our bureaucrats. After all it is not their mansions that get flooded.
It will be worth the wait to see what is done after the aerial photographs are acquired. And by the time the contour map at 0.5m interval is made available to the Municipal corporation, the ''Urban Renewal'' project would have changed the face of the city ... so we would be back to square one.
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by Dr Anupam K Singh, India on 7/28/2009
It is heartening that DoD has given green signal for contour mapping of Mumbai city at 0.5m vertical resolution. It of paramount importance to have such detailed base map for flood modelling incl. real time flood forecasting and hazard mapping. I think 0.5m scale is still coarse resolution (in comparision to flood defence and monitoring work in Germany, Switzerland, Japan) for urban flood mapping in a city like Mumbai where major drainage lines show negative slope during mean flow conditions, leave aside high tide situations. Once again , decision by DoD is huge welcome and will provide some respite to local uran bodies in providing informed decision making. Our research experience funded under ISRO-RESPOND program for flood mapping and hazard estimation for Tapi river in Surat city are very encouraging even for coarser resolution.
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