IMD conducts pre-cyclone exercise for the season April-June 2024

New Delhi: The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), chaired by Dr. Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Director General, conducted a Pre-Cyclone Exercise for the April-June 2024 season. The session, held on April 10 at Mausam Bhavan, New Delhi, utilized a Hybrid mode.

This exercise is part of the biennial routine aimed at assessing the preparedness of various stakeholders in disaster management before and after the cyclone season. Dr. Mohapatra emphasized the effectiveness of India’s early warning system and weather forecasting models. He highlighted IMD’s recent achievements in cyclone forecasting and underscored the ongoing collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority, National Disaster Response Force, and Indian Armed Forces.

Dr. Mohapatra revealed IMD’s development of an indigenous ‘Decision Support System’ with significantly improved accuracy compared to previous decades. He mentioned the deployment of a Multimodal ensemble system for continuous weather monitoring and the development of mobile apps for issuing warnings, with available Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for other organizations.

Notably, zero casualties were reported during cyclone Biparjoy due to preparedness efforts. Dr. Mohapatra also mentioned the National Disaster Management Authority’s development of a Web-based Dynamic Composite Risk Atlas (Web-DCRA) under the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP) to provide location-specific forecasting to district disaster managers.

Celebrating IMD’s 150th year of service to the nation, Dr. Mohapatra expressed confidence in reaching every household with weather information anytime and anywhere, leveraging state-of-the-art technology and collaboration with academia, R&D institutes, public-private partnerships, and stakeholders.

Shri. Mohsen Shahedi, DIG (Ops & Training) NDRF, praised IMD’s efforts and expressed confidence in cooperative efforts between NDMA, NDRF, and IMD. Shri. R K Agarwal, (PA &AO), NCRMP, highlighted the success achieved in the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation project with cooperation from IMD.

Representatives from various disaster management agencies, including government officials from coastal states and union territories, senior officials from Director General Shipping, Director General of Lighthouses and Lightships, National Hydrographic Office, Airport Authority of India, Port Authority, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Fisheries, Rural Development, All India Radio, Doordarshan News, and Press Information Bureau, participated in the exercise.