The workshop in progress in Guwahati. A Telegraph picture

Guwahati, Oct. 26: Local and global expertise is being used to assess the socio-economic vulnerability of two villages in Assam’s Kamrup district for effective disaster management.

Experts from the University of Southampton, Salzburg University, Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development and Aaranyak, an NGO, will go to Dakhala and Guimara villages of Kamrup district on Friday to carry out the two-day exercise.

This was disclosed today at the opening of an eight-day workshop on Training Programme on Participatory Flood Hazard Mapping and Socio-Economic Vulnerability Analysis organised by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

“We would like to know the ground situation. We hear that floods are the biggest problem of Assam but here we find that erosion is also a big problem,” Craig Hutton of Southampton University said. Approximately 40 per cent of the Brahmaputra river basin is flood-prone and suffers damage on an annual basis, making it an intensively hazard-prone area, said Hutton.

The University of Southampton and Centre for Geo-informatics, Salzburg University, have developed a methodology to assess the socio-economic vulnerability of the flood-prone community in the Upper Brahmaputra river basin.

“We will test the methodology in Dakhala and Guimara villages of Kamrup district,” he added. He said the methodology was expected to be useful to the institutions that were working in the field of disaster risk management in the Northeast.

The plan is to develop and disseminate a simple manual on community vulnerability analysis and mapping, combining local knowledge and technical methods.

Rajesh Thapa, a land and water analyst at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, said a river basin information system for the Brahmaputra, which was developed as part of the Brahmatwinn project, would be disseminated at a stakeholders’ workshop in Kathmandu next month.

The river basin information system will provide details of the Brahmaputra regarding its catchment, water flow and other aspects.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development is a regional knowledge development and learning centre, serving the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Dulal Goswami, an authority on the Brahmaputra, gave a comprehensive description of the trans-boundary river.

Thapa said the centre was working on satellite rainfall estimation, which was the only effective way to provide continuous monitoring of precipitation events over a large region and was one of the most cost effective and viable means to develop global, regional and local rainfall scenarios.