To promote the use of modern technologies and to strengthen the early warning  system  for  natural  disasters,  Ministry  of  Earth  Sciences  has launched a Multi-faceted transformative approach namely “Mission Mausam” for the period 2024-2026 with the goal of making India a “weather-ready and climate smart” nation.

Under the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP) Early Warning Systems have been installed in the Coastal States, which have proved to be of great help in alert dissemination to the coastal community during recent cyclones.

‘Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) based Integrated Alert System’ has been initiated with an outlay of Rs. 354.83 Crore, for dissemination of geo targeted early warnings/alerts related to disasters to the citizens of India for all 36 States/UTs using various disseminating medium like SMS, TV, Radio, Indian Railways, Costal Sirens, Cell broadcast, Internet (RSS feed & Browser Notification), Satellite Receiver of GAGAN & NavIC, through integration of all alerting agencies.

The agencies include-India Meteorological Department (IMD), Central Water Commission (CWC), Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Defence Geo-informatics Research Establishment (DGRE), Geological Survey of India (GSI) and Forest Survey of India (FSI). 

In CAP system, the alerts related to various disasters are generated by Alert Generating Agencies like IMD, CWC, INCOIS, DGRE & FSI and moderated by SDMAs of concern States/UTs.  

The alerts are sent to geo targeted areas in regional languages. There is a web-based dashboard to disaster managers for approving/editing alerts and choosing media for dissemination. The system has been used successfully in recent disasters.  More than 4500 crore SMS alerts have been disseminated so far using CAP.

National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has also initiated a project for Pan India, end-to-end secure and foolproof Disaster Grade Cell Broadcasting System (CBS) to improve faster dissemination of alert / early warning messages to the citizen.

Defence Geo-informatics Research Establishment (DGRE), Chandigarh under Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is also the nodal agency for studying and developing avalanche mitigation technologies.  DGRE has installed 72 Snow Meteorological Observatories and 45 Automated Weather Stations (AWS).  

India Metrological Department (IMD) issues regular and precise weather forecasts & warning bulletins including for cyclones to all the affected/ likely affected States/ UTs.

IMD uses a suite of quality observations from Satellites, Radars and Conventional & Automatic Weather Stations for monitoring of cyclones developing over the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. It includes INSAT 3D, 3DR and SCATSAT satellites, Doppler Weather Radars (DWRs) along the coast and coastal Automated Weather Stations (AWS), High wind speed recorders, Automatic Rain Gauges (ARGs), Meteorological buoys and ships.