Regional Cooperation for Flood Disaster Mitigation : In the Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region : Technical Papers

Contents: Foreword. 1. Data and information management for integrated hydrological and meteorological networks/Adarsha P. Pokhrel and Dilip K. Gautam. 2. Flood management and local adaptation strategies/Qazi K. Ahmad. 3. Development of the flood forecasting and warning system in Bangladesh/A.N.H. Akhtar Hossain. 4. Integrated hydrometeorological network design and operation for flood forecasting/Qin Dahe. 5. Flood management in integrated river basin development/Rama Shanker Prasad. 6. Use of short-and long-term meteorological information in flood forecasting/Shyam V. Singh, S.C. Kar, M. Ravindranath, G.R. Iyengar, S. Das and E.N. Rajagopal. 7. An integrated hydrological-hydraulic modelling approach for flood forecasting/Guna Nidhi Paudyal. 8. Telecommunication systems for real-time hydrometeorological data collection and transmission for the HKH region/Richard W. Paulson and Verne R. Schneider. 9. State-of-the-art methods of hydrological and meteorological data acquisition systems for flood forecasting/Shaukat Ali Awan.

From the foreword: "Too often, the people in the path of these floods have no warning, and in many cases it is the poorest of the poor, those with the least resources for recovery, who are exposed most. Controlling these floods is a daunting, and perhaps impossible, task - but much can be done to reduce the damage they cause by providing sufficient warning of the impending disaster for threatened populations to protect their property or move to safer areas. By their nature, floods are a regional issue. Most of the rivers that rise in the HKH region flow through more than one country. The countries of the region are drawn together through common river basins, and must come together to link upstream events with downstream consequences, and downstream policies with upstream consequences. To forecast floods with any degree of accuracy, timely and reliable hydrometeorological information is needed from the whole of each river basin, thus information must be exchanged across national borders, and all countries need a sufficient and compatible capacity in data collection, transmission and flood forecasting."