‘ISRO can protect small island states from inundation due to global warming’

The central government told the Parliament that ISRO has the requisite technologies and expertise to provide information on advance warning of cyclones, monitoring of coastlines and coral reefs using space-based inputs to support small island states to help them protect from inundation due to rising temperatures.

“ISRO is gearing up to provide such information to some of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Indian Ocean Region,” said Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha

“India, the UK, Australia, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mauritius jointly launched an initiative, Infrastructure for the Resilient Island States (IRIS) to provide technical support on disaster resilience of infrastructure systems to SIDS, during the 26th Conference of Parties held in Glasgow, the UK by United Nations,” he added.

Singh said that IRIS will also support SIDS by facilitating access to existing financial mechanisms for resilient infrastructure development. IRIS will extend its support on-demand basis to 58 Small Island Developing States (SIDS) across geographic regions.

ISRO carries out prediction of track, intensity, landfall time, and location of all cyclones originating in Indian Oceans using space-based inputs. While India Meteorological Department (IMD) is the mandated agency to provide the Cyclone forecast advisories, ISRO supports IMD in improving the prediction methodologies and publishing the R&D outputs for the help of all.

ISRO has carried out a vulnerability assessment of the selected states along the Indian coastal region and has identified coastal stretches that are susceptible due to sea-level rise. ISRO provides near real-time prediction of storm surge and surge induced inundation for the Indian coast during cyclones using satellite observations and numerical model.

Maps of coral reefs of the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden have been published and are updated regularly. A region-specific Coral Bleaching Monitoring System based on sea surface temperature data is hosted on ISRO's VEDAS geoportal.