About Project
India is highly vulnerable to floods, which has large scale economic as well as social impacts. To address the issue and lessen the burden of the disaster management agencies, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, is executing a project viz., ‘Early Warning System for Flood Prediction for River Basins of India’ under the National Supercomputing Mission of MeitY and DST, Govt. of India.
Under this project, three important aspects of flood management are being handled. Flood Prediction and Early Warning, Integrated Reservoir Operations and Sediment Transport Model.
A free and open source software tool for 2D hydrodynamic modelling is being used for prediction modelling and simulation. The model is designed such that it is both scalable and flexible and without much changes, except input data, and can be implemented in any river basin of India. The simulation runs for predicting floods are being carried out since year 2020. Every year daily flood predictions have been carried out for the monsoon season (June to October) for Mahanadi Basin. The model is massively parallelised and NSM HPC resources are being used for carrying out these daily simulation runs. The results have been shared with State Water Resources Department and Central Water Commission for validations. Since 2022 monsoon season, Tapi River Basin simulations have also been started.
Key Deliverables:
- Early Warning System for Flood Prediction- 2-days flood forecast (water level, inundation extent, flow, village level % inundation)
- Integrated framework for flood modelling at River Basin Level adaptable for the entire country
The daily outputs include a 2-day flood forecast in the form of village-level percentage inundation information and predicted inundation spread and water level information. This is the only solution that provides spatial inundation extent and depth of water for visualisation and querying. Every 3 hours, water progression is updated and spatial extents and water level can be visualised using geospatial portal C-FLOOD.
Both Odisha State Water Resources Department and Central Water Commission Bhubaneshwar have been part of this project and as such their continuous support has been fruitful for the project.
Objectives
- Design, develop and deploy an Early Warning System for Flood Prediction (EWS-FP) on HPC platform
- Develop Sediment Transport model
- Develop Integrated Reservoir Operation tools
- Design geospatial portal for information dissemination on flood prediction
Application
Weblink for geospatial portal https://inf.cwc.gov.in
Milestones
- The unified inundation system, C-FLOOD was launched by the Honourable Union Minister of Jal Shakti, Mr. C.R. Patil on the 2nd of July 2025. Shri C. R. Patil appreciated the collaborative efforts of CWC, C-DAC, and NRSC in operationalizing this state-of-the-art flood forecasting dissemination system.(Launch news link: https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=2141608)
- The system leverages HPC for high-resolution modelling, achieving up to a mere 15-20 cm error in water depth estimation in floodplains.
- The system offers a 48-hour flood prediction window with a 2-hour simulation turnaround time. This crucial lead time enables authorities to take pre-emptive actions like evacuations.
Achievements
- The National Dam Safety Authority has awarded a project worth Rs. 8 CR for the first level Dam Break Rapid Assessment for 6500 dams covering the country using HPC resources.
- GFCC (Ganga Flood Control commission) has invited C-DAC to submit proposal for Risk-based Comprehensive Plan for Flood Management in Ganga Basin. Technical proposal has been approved, and submitted by GFCC to Ministry for approval.
- Tamil Nadu Disaster Management Commissioner has expressed their desire to implement this system in all the river basin of Tamil Nadu.
- Feasibility analysis for proposed embankments, inundation prediction and embankment breach scenario generation for Lakhisarai District.
- Collaboration between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) on GPU-based flood modelling and simulation.
- Nominated Member for Working Group on Data, Technology and Innovation under the National Task Force for Integrated Water Resources Development and Management.
- GANANA: India-EU Initiative for Scientific High Performance Computing.
Publications
Journals
- Upasana Dutta, Yogesh Kumar Singh, T. S. Murugesh Prabhu, Girishchandra Yendargaye, Rohini Kale, Manoj Kumar Khare, Binay Kumar, and Rajani Panchang, Embankment Breach Simulation and Inundation Mapping: Leveraging High-Performance Computing for Enhanced Flood Risk Prediction and Assessment, ISPRS Annals Publication. ISPRS Belém 2024 TC3 Symposium. https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-X-3-2024-117-2024
- Upasana Dutta, Yogesh Kumar Singh, T. S. Murugesh Prabhu, Girishchandra Yendargaye, Rohini Gopinath Kale, Binay Kumar, Manoj Khare, Rahul Yadav, Ritesh Khattar and Sushant Kumar Samal, ‘Flood Forecasting in Large River Basins Using FOSS Tool and HPC’, Water 2021, 13(24), 3484; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243484.
- Nisha Agrawal, Abhishek Das, Girishchandra R. Yendargaye, T.S.Murugesh Prabhu, Sandeep K. Joshi, and V. Venkatesh Shenoi. 2021. Performance Analysis of Python-based Finite Volume Solver ANUGA on Modern Architectures. 2021 Thirteenth International Conference on Contemporary Computing (IC3-2021) (IC3 ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 378–387
Conference and workshops
Yogesh Kumar Singh, Upasana Dutta, T. S. Murugesh Prabhu, Girishchandra Yendargaye, Leveraging HPC and Advanced Hydrological Modeling for Accurate Flood Forecasting, Energy HPC Conference February 25–27, 2025 BRC Rice University Houston, TX
Rohini Kale Upasana Dutta, Yogesh Kumar Singh, T. S. Murugesh Prabhu, Girishchandra Yendargaye, Multi-Source Elevation Extraction for Improved Hydrodynamic Modeling and Flood Simulation in ISG-ISRS National Symposium 2023
Upasana Dutta, Yogesh Kumar Singh, T. S. Murugesh Prabhu, Girishchandra Yendargaye Remote Sensing Use for Flood and Drought Assessment at Regional and Global Scale, WARMS 2024.
Yogesh Kumar Singh, Upasana Dutta, T. S. Murugesh Prabhu, Girishchandra Yendargaye Harnessing High-Performance Computing for Water Resources Management and Sustainability in Arid Regions
T S Murugesh Prabhu, Yogesh Kumar Singh, Upasana Dutta, Girishchandra Yendargaye, Binay Kumar, Manoj Khare, ‘Altimetry-based gauge-level estimation in the Mahanadi River Basin’, 27th International Conference on Hydraulics, Water Resources, Environmental and Coastal Engineering (HYDRO 2022 INTERNATIONAL).
Dahiwale A. V., Sekhar M., Dutta. U., Yogesh Kumar Singh and Prabhu T. S. M, ‘Modeling Sediment Transport Dynamics of Tel River in the sub-basin’, 27th International Conference on Hydraulics, Water Resources, Environmental and Coastal Engineering (HYDRO 2022 INTERNATIONAL).
Dabra, R., Wadhwa, S., Sood, M.K., Sandhu, H.A.S., Batish, S., Kumar, B., Dutta, U., Yogesh Kumar Singh., Prabhu, T.S.M., Yendergaye, G., Khare, M., ‘Reservoir Operations using Artificial Neural Network – A case study of Hirakud Reservoir’, 27th International Conference on Hydraulics, Water Resources, Environmental and Coastal Engineering (HYDRO 2022 INTERNATIONAL).
Yogesh Kumar Singh, ‘Early Warning System for Flood Prediction in the River Basins Of India’, Jan 2023, First International Conference on Emergency Support and Disaster Management (ISERDM), at National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (NIT-T), India.
Yogesh Kumar Singh, ‘Early Warning System For Flood Prediction In The River Basins Of India using HPC’, 7th India Water Week – 2022, at India Expo Center, Greater Noida, India.
Feedback/testimonials
Collaborators/Partners
- Central Water Commission (CWC), Delhi
- Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru
End Users/Stakeholders
- Central Water Commission (CWC)
- State Water Resources Department (SWRD)
- National and State Disaster Management Authorities (NDMA, SDMA)
- National Disaster Response Force (NDRF)
- District Administration
Contact
Ms. Upasana Dutta (PI), upasanad@cdac.in
+91-20-2550233/2550257