Floodplain mapping can help avoid flood impact: IRF

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, July 3

The International Road Federation (IRF), a Geneva-based global body working for better and safer roads worldwide, has expressed deep concern at repeated loss of lives, landslides, areas being cut off and chaos on roads and infrastructure in Uttarakhand during rains for the last several years. It has stressed the need of adopting time-tested sustainable solutions, including floodplain mapping and flood-proofing measures.

“It’s high time that we use tested and sustainable solutions and ecologically-proven techniques for avoiding flood-related disaster every year. We can also adopt apt investigative tools in determining causes for the failure every year . Depending on the causes, proven technologies that meet specific needs have to be adopted so that the state, which has borders with other countries, has all-weather roads and sustainable infrastructure,” says KK Kapila, Chairman, IRF, and Co-Chairman, FICCI Transport Infrastructure Committee.

“Floodplain mapping programmes are carried out worldwide to avoid loss of human life and damage to infrastructure. With the help of floodplain mapping the impact of floods can be minimised by not allowing habitation and development in flood-prone areas, adopting an optimum combination of structural measures such as large storage reservoirs, detention basins and embankments and non-structural measures such as flood forecasting, floodplain zoning and catchment area treatment,” he says.

“Similarly, there is need to use non-destructive and least-invasive techniques to build all-season sustainable roads and infrastructure in the hill state in the aftermath of the natural disaster,” he said.

“As a first step, a detailed subsurface investigation of the affected areas should be done. Non-destructive testing is an integral and important aspect of subsurface investigation, which is recommended,” he adds.

Kapila says ideally the best way to develop roads in the hills is through the use of tunnels and connecting via ducts.

This minimised disturbance to the existing hill slopes. “One of the best examples is the Kalka-Shimla Heritage Rail the alignment of which comprises 103 tunnels crossing geologically a weak strata. Despite being over 100-year old, this rail line had been closed on rare occasions indicating the robustness of the alignment in penetrating slopes in geologically competent formations and tunneling when such formations are unavailable.

However, the economics often restricts development of such costly but far more permanent solutions. Thus, it is time that we adopt alternative technologies for our structures,” he says.