Proactive approach, tech key to minimise damage from natural disasters: PM Modi

During the programme, Modi also felicitated awardees of the Subhas Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar for 2023 — Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) and the Lunglei Fire Station, Mizoram.

Narendra Modi, Natural disasters, natural calamities, Indian Express, India news, current affairs

Prime Minister Narendra Modi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday pitched for a “proactive rather than reactive” approach to handle natural disasters and minimise damage.

Inaugurating the third session of the National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (NPDRR) in New Delhi, he said: “We cannot stop natural disasters but we can come up with systems to minimise damage from them. We have to be proactive rather than reactive. What was the situation in the country (earlier) for being proactive and what is the situation now? Even after five decades of Independence, there was no law to tackle disasters.”

He said after the 2001 earthquake in Kutch, Gujarat was the first state to come up with a disaster management Act. On the basis of this Act, the Centre enacted the National Disaster Management Act in 2005. Subsequently, the National Disaster Management Authority was set up. “Traditional housing and town planning process should be enriched with future technology to better manage disaster planning and real-time assessment of resilience of local infrastructure is the need of the hour,” he added.

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He also stressed exploring the use of artificial intelligence, 5G along with Internet of Things (IoT) to make the ambulance network future-ready and also asked the stakeholders to look into the use of drones, gadgets for alerting, and personal gadgets that can help in locating people buried under debris. Focusing on strengthening disaster management governance in local bodies, he said: “We will have to institutionalise planning and review local planning. We have to work on two levels; disaster management experts will have to focus more on public participation and also for a real time registration and monitoring system using technology.”

During the programme, Modi also felicitated awardees of the Subhas Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar for 2023 — Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) and the Lunglei Fire Station, Mizoram.

NPDRR is a multi-stakeholder platform to facilitate dialogue and share experiences, views, ideas, action-oriented research and explore opportunities in the area of disaster risk reduction.

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