Senior government officers at the book release function in Patna on Friday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, May 13: To provide key and accurate data input to different departments in formulating policies and schemes, planning and development department would set up about 50 automatic weather stations across the state.

The automatic weather station would collect real-time data with regard to rainfall ratio, temperature, wind speed, direction, velocity, humidity on a daily basis.

The data collected through the station would directly transmit it to the server of directorate of statistics in real-time so that the government could have idea about the likely weather conditions of a given area and plan acordingly.

On the basis of available data, incidents of flood, drought, drought-like situation, scanty rainfall, humidity could be predicted and these departments could take appropriate action or formulate plans accordingly.

“Initially, we will start with 50 such stations at block headquarters level to collect the real-time data on a pilot basis in the current fiscal. The first such station is likely to be set up in June-July,” J.K. Sinha, joint director-cum-office head of economics and statistics directorate, told The Telegraph.

Sinha, during the workshop organised by the department on “installation of automatic weather station”, said: “We have organised the workshop to discuss all issues including the issue of location plan for setting up these plants. In Andhra Pradesh, these stations have been set up at 100sqkm.”

During the workshop, prof Prabhat Ranjan of Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology, Pune, prof Rajiv Mishra from IIT-Patna, prof Ras Bihari Bose of geography department of Patna University and a host of people from various departments including India Meteorological Department (IMD) would deliberate on the aspects of setting up these stations.

While releasing a book containing collection of rainfall data of 10 years of various districts of Bihar, planning and development department principal secretary Vijoy Prakash said the current system of collecting data is very archaic and collected manually, which delays the availability of data to the end users.

“We don’t get timely and accurate data and whatever data is available we could not make its optimum use. We can’t use the data to better our chances either to increase or protect agricultural output,” Prakash said.

Enumerating the challenges before the department and various government agencies with regard to data collection and analysis, the principal secretary said: “We have a few challenges before us such as how to get or collect the data on real-time basis, how to analyse in a better manner and send or make it available to the end user.”

These weather stations could come in handy in resolving these hiccups, Prakash said adding that they will work out as to whether stations could be set up at panchayat level, block or district level. “We will have to also keep the data about the river-water level,” he said.