Milestones in STH: Making it to the 36th International Geological Congress in Delhi in Mar2020

The 36th IGC, is undoubtedly the most prestigious event of its kind in the world where the best minds and scientists would congregate for the congress.
STH had submitted its abstract several days ago on the subject 'Role of ICT in Disaster Information Exchange and knowledge sharing at the grass root level: our experience in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya'.
We are very happy that our abstract has been accepted by Team 36 IGC.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district,
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

Event of Note: Project Landslip Annual Meeting in Darjeeling - 19 to 21Feb2019

Physical scientists, engineers and social scientists from nine organisations in the UK, Italy and India from the UK NERC/DFID funded project LANDSLIP will be in Darjeeling from 19-21 February for their annual consortium meeting. LANDSLIP.

LANDSLIP (LANDSLIde multi-hazard assessment, Preparedness and early warning in South Asia) is now beginning its third year, is developing landslide hazard assessment and a prototype early warning systems in two study areas (Darjeeling/East Sikkim and Nilgiris) including the best means of disseminating this information to those who need it in India. Some of the methodologies developed through this project will be replicable to the landslide-prone areas elsewhere in India and South Asia.

The project consortium of 34 scientists and engineers is co-led by Dr Helen Reeves from the British Geological Survey (BGS) and Professor Bruce Malamud from King’s College London (KCL) with the other project partners from the Amrita University, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection), the Geological Survey of India (GSI), Newcastle University, UK Met Office, Practical Action Consulting India and Practical Action Consulting UK.

Around 24 of the LANDSLIP experts from India, UK and Italy will be in Darjeeling this week for an internal conference meeting, along with a subset of the group meeting key Darjeeling district disaster management officers.
To read more about this project please visit: www.landslip.org

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district,
Darjeeling Sikkim Himalaya

Project SHAMROCC in Kalimpong (29Feb-04Mar2016) - an event of note.

Prof David Petley has covered the technical aspects of the landslides in a series of articles posted day wise on his blog here.

About Project SHAMROCC (Sensing with High Accuracy in Mountainous Regions for Observations of Climate Change) involves participation of experts in various disciplines from the UK and India for the development of a Landslide Prediction System in the form of low-cost high density sensor networks and computer systems to be installed in specific landslide prone zones of Kalimpong.

Kalimpong was selected from among a number of areas for installation of the prototype equipment on the basis of historical landslides that have claimed lives/damaged infrastructure as well as on the availability of broad band internet in the close vicinity. 

SaveTheHills (STH), a Kalimpong-based NGO which has been working on landslide hazards for the past 8yrs actively collaborated with the project in this regard.

Further, the team installed two internet based automatic weather stations in Kalimpong which will provide real time weather data to SHAMROCC scientists both in the UK and India in order to observe, firsthand the effects of climate change and shifting rainfall patterns in the Darjeeling Himalayas. This AWS data on Kalimpong  is available here and is updated every 60secs.

It is hoped that the study will make landslide prediction feasible and accurate and the lessons learnt from this project can be applied to other regions including the UK as well.
Project SHAMROCC comes under the aegis of UKIERI (UK-India Education and Research Initiative) and is funded by the British Council.

My grateful thanks to the entire SHAMROCC team for their visit and the time that they spent in Kalimpong. It was wonderful.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong,
Dist Darjeeling