*Radio Communication and weather warning

This article briefly covers the role the Radio communication has been playing and will be expected to play in future to provide warning against Weather elements that result in Disasters. It is particularly important for this Month of June when Monsoon has set in quite early.

We can trace our interest and attention to the use the communication system for warning against natural disasters to the 17th Dec 1974 United Nations General assembly resolution No 3345 (XXIV) in which the UN Secretary General was requested to take approriate measures to provide facilities for coordinated multidisciplinary research and all other necessary actions rquired to reduce the impace of natural disasters for better social and economic development of the member countries particularly the developing ones and decided to designate the 1990's as 'Interntational Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction'.

The salient paras covering communications and weather warning are:

1. Considering that the concept of a global programme for natural disaster reduction is predicated on collaborative efforts among culturally and economically diverse nations, together with relevant organisations of the United Nations system and other national and international Government and Non-Governmental organisations including the Scientific and Technological institutions concered

2. "Recognise the scientific and technical understanding of the causes and impace of natural disasters and of ways to reduce both human and property losses has progressed to such an extent, that a concerted effort to assemble, disseminate and apply this knowledge through national, regional and worldwide programme could have very positive effect"

3. Decides (a) to imporve the capacity of each country to mitigate the effects of natural disasters expeditiously and effectively, paying special attention to assisting developing countries int he establishment where need of "Early Warning Systems"

(b) to disseminate existing and new information related to measures for the assessement, prediction prevention and mitigation of natural disasters.

The UN Secretary General on 1st Jan 1990 declared the beginning of the decade for Natural Disaster Reduction and inititated action on behalf of the United Nationas through the United Nations Disaster Releif Organisation and many other countries followed.

In India the Director General All India Radio organised a workshop on the 5th and 6th of Dec 1990 which was a fitting tribute to the UN Resolution which demanded extensive cooperation from each Government and its concernted departments. Since then AIR has been playing a major role by educating the masses well in time and provide the warning to the threatened population.

In the 1980's when there was a severe cyclone in Chennai on a DEEWALI day, the AIR Madras closed down the transmission saying that the communication lines between the Meteorological department and AIR has snapped and they could not broadcast the weather warnings. Then the famous Neurologist DR B Ramamurthy wrote in the Hindu saying that he believed that AIR posesses at least the 19th century equipment if not the 21st century . What he meant was that a simple wireless connection between the Met office and AIr would have helped to disseminate the information.

Again in 1974 the famous Andhra Pradesh Cyclone which killed thousands of people was watched by the US NOAA weather satellite and we got the pictures after the cyclone had already stuck and caused the disaster.

What a change? Today the IRS satellite which was launched from the same Andhra Pradesh coast and the Indian Remote sensing agency situated in the same state is providing far better pictures to USA than any othe country. We should be proud of the achievements of our space scientists.

The Goverment ahs appointed the "Cyclone Disaster Mitigation Committee" which in its recommendations had extensively taken care of assessing the potentiality of the Radio communication system for forewarning the threatened zones andthus came up the laiasion between the Meteorological department and the All India Radio to start disseminating warnings well in time so that the administration of the districts likely to be affected gear up their system of precautionary and preventive measures to meet the threat and the AIR and DD started issuing warnings.

One thing still lacks in this plan i.e. the Education of the threatened population in DO's and DON'ts during such calamities. This has to be done well in time, rather should be a continous process and allotment of certain slots by the AIR and Doordarshan during the regional transmission timings is essential.

Today with the existing updated Radar system of the Meteorological department, the supercomputer and the INSAT and IRS satellites, the cyclones are being continuously tracked, if need be every half hour and we are in a position to broadcast at least 24 hours in advance about the threatened zone. Here there is a need for the existing radio stations whether they are AM, SW or FM along with TV channels must take the responsibility of guiding the population in evacuation to safer places well in time and take the precatutionary and reventive measures and save their life and property.