LUCKNOW | Friday, March 12, 2010 | Email | Print |  | Back
UP all set to have automatic weather stations
Faisal Fareed | Lucknow
Uttar Pradesh (UP) is all set to acquire automatic weather stations equipped with sensors thereby making weather forecasting farmer friendly. The unique facility will be put to use for the first time in India on the lines of Australia and USA.
These automatic weather stations will be established by UP Water Sector Restructuring Project (UPWSRP) under the Irrigation department. “We have already started the process and have invited international bids for establishing these stations,” said Executive engineer, UPWSRP, Kanhaiya Singh.
This latest technology is use in Australia and USA and UP will be the first Indian state to implement it. The need for the automation was felt as the tedious job of manual data collection at some districts in the past was aborted due to lack of resources and authenticity.
The automatic stations will be equipped with sensors and connected online to the Project Activity Contributing Team (PACT) of UPWSRP at their head office in Utretia, Telibagh in Lucknow.
Elaborating their usage, Kanhaiya Singh said: “These weather stations will collect information on various parametres scuh as rainfall, relative humidity, temperature, wind speed etc. The information will be forwarded online to the Lucknow head office for analysis and conversion to farmer friendly terms.”
As these stations will be spread across majority of the UP districts, every farmer will get only area specific information.
“ In simple terms, farmers will get to know about crop related weather conditions in advance which will facilitate their plan of action,” said Singh.
Besides, the Irrigation department too plans to make good use of the information this received. Flood forecast and drought management are two utilities for the Irrigation department. “If we get timely and accurate information, we can predict the rise of water level in Gomti at Sultanpur as a sequel to five centimetres of rains in Lucknow,” said Singh.
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