Flood monitoring, forecasting, and early-warning activities in Sri Lanka supported by JAXA and DIAS

 Senior Researcher Abdul Wahid Mohamed Rasmy and Research Specialist TAMAKAWA Katsunori visited Sri Lanka on March 7-13, 2024, to maintain the systems for real-time rainfall observation and data transfer. The system installation and maintenance, as well as data transfer, have been conducted under a joint research program between Sri Lanka’s Irrigation Department and ICHARM, part of the JAXA GPM project, and a water-related project using the Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS), funded by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The systems are currently in operation at six stations in the country’s western and eastern regions; they were initially installed at three stations in February 2015 and later at three other stations, each of them sending hourly rainfall data in real time to DIAS, operated by the University of Tokyo in Japan.

 ICHARM has developed an advanced flood monitoring, forecasting, and early warning system for the Kalu River basin, which is designed to use observed data from these six ground gauges, GSMaP real-time data (GSMaP_NOW), a hydrological model (WEB-RRI) outputs, and 39-hour quantitative rainfall forecasts, and put it to test operation. DIAS hosts this system to demonstrate the potential of the latest advances in science and technology in the management and mitigation of water-related disasters in Sri Lanka under the framework of the IFI Platform on Water Resilience and Disasters.