| MINT & BRIC
Right: Figure 4. SWOT satellite showing the overpass on 16 August 2024 (6 days before the impending flooding). The left panel shows the extent of water filling up the 100mX100m pixels. The right panel shows the elevation relative to a common datum
the Dumboor dam that is located above the core of where precipitation took place. Precipitation forecast from widely available global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models such as GEFS from NOAA missed the intensity of the precipitation at 3 day lead time. We can infer this by comparing the lower right sub-plot of left panel with the right panel plots and the red arrow. Global NWP models can suffer from poor spatial precision of the most intense precipitation events. It is clear from the data that since most of the precipitation fell downstream of the dam in India, the dam itself could not have the strongest impact on exacerbating the flooding downstream in India. Next, we rapidly prototyped the satellite based
reservoir tracking system that can track and forecast reservoir state and reservoir release along with broader inundation state using SWOT inundation map. Figure 4 shows the pre-flood water level conditions according to SWOT on 16 August 2024. SWOT inundation data reveals that the water level at the border region between India and Bangladesh were higher than the surrounding flat regions, particularly in the southeastern regions of Bangladesh (locally known as Feni that was most affected by this flooding). This higher water level of rivers at the border region may have been caused by the preceding monsoon rains, thereby leading to conditions ripe for the transboundary flooding during Aug 21-22 to become catastrophic. The satellite-based reservoir tracking and
forecasting system is called Reservoir Assessment Tool (RAT) Tripura and is currently operationalized at https://
depts.washington.edu/saswe/tripura. RAT Tripura uses the concepts of open source modelling, cloud computing and a reservoir tracking concept formalised and made publicly available as scalable software by Minocha et al. (2024). RAT-Tripura is a modeling system that now runs in
near real-time using lowest latency satellite data and produces routine updates of the flooding and reservoir situation (inflow and outflow) to empower water management agencies on both sides of the India- Bangladesh border. Figure 5 shows that RAT-Tripura, if it was already
in place as a practitioner tool for flood management agencies of India and Bangladesh, and if the focus was on trends of the transboundary river flow with an eye on the upstream Dumboor dam, livelihoods could have been impacted with better early warning up to 2-3 days.
Right: Figure 5. Forecast of outflow made at the Gomti river location where it enters Bangladesh from India on August 19, 20 and 21, 2024 using RAT- Tripura. If one focuses on trends, it is clear that RAT- Tripura is able to pick the date of peak with a one day offset 2-3 days ahead of time to be potentially actionable for flood preparedness
www.waterpowermagazine.com | March 2025 | 15
More cooperation, less
References
disinformation RAT-Tripura (Reservoir Assessment Tool)-Tripura is now actively under consideration and investigation as an operational decision-assisting tool by the Bangladesh Water Development Board’s (BWDB) Flood Forecasting and Warning Center (FFWC). As the flood was evolving, the authors had the opportunity to reach out to the staff of BWDB Director General and FFWC on 25 August 2024, and share the tool. Around the same time, the Ministry of Water Resources and Environment of Bangladesh under the current interim government led by Professor Yunus, also had a chance to learn about the SWOT satellite emission, RAT-Tripura and what satellite-based Earth observations revealed during the peak of the flood event. The counterpart agencies in the Indian state of Tripura were also reached out to. Currently, conversations continue with BWDB and
FFWC on how to make the most optimal use of such satellite data and open-source reservoir tracking tools through capacity building of their staff. As the call for more transboundary cooperation
and treaties for sharing information and water ramp up, we believe our efforts and tools will play a vital role in understanding how satellites from space can provide an unbiased view of the ground situation to fight disinformation and promote transboundary collaboration.
Author information
Pritam Das, Sanchit Minocha, Shahzaib Khan and Faisal Hossain, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, US.
Hossain, F., and N. Katiyar (2006), Improving flood forecasting in international river basins, Eos Trans. AGU, 87(5), 49–54, doi:10.1029/2006EO050001.
Minocha et al. (2024) Reservoir Assessment Tool version 3.0: a scalable and user-friendly software platform to mobilize the global water management community, Geo Sci Model Development, Vol. 17(8), pp. 3137–3156.
Reuters, August 24, 2024 -
https://www.reuters.com/ world/india/floods-landslides- indias-tripura-displace-tens- thousands-2024-08-23/
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