Back to news
10 Jul 2018 | CBFEWS

Local Communities Take Ownership of Flood Early Warning System

At the onset of the 2018 monsoon, a community in Shrikhandi Bhittamore in Bihar, India, raised funds to repair a community-based flood early warning system (CBFEWS) that had been damaged along the Ratu River near the Nepal–India border. The funds were raised by Yuganter, a local NGO, and community representatives led by the Mukhiya of Shrikhandi, Purnima Mishra. The system was repaired by International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Sustainable Eco Engineering (SEE), in partnership with Yuganter.

0 mins Read

70% Complete
A team from SEE restoring the system in Shrikhandi Bhittamore

ICIMOD, partners, and local governments have come together to save lives from flash flooding by installing eleven such community-based flood early warning systems (CBFEWS) in nine tributaries of the Bramhaputra, Indus, and Koshi rivers in Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.

A CBFEWS provides at least four hours of lead time for vulnerable communities to respond to approaching floods. The systems, which rely on technology and human operators, have saved lives and property and established goodwill between upstream and downstream communities otherwise unknown to each other. During the 2017 monsoon floods, CBFEWS helped save 17 children on along the Koshi River, in Nepal and India.


A Yuganter representative handing over the amount to SEE-ICIMOD representatives as Purnima Mishra observes

Stay current

Stay up to date on what’s happening around the HKH with our most recent publications and find out how you can help by subscribing to our mailing list.

Sign Up

Related content

Continue exploring this topic

22 May 2019 Livelihoods
Regional cooperation for tourism development: High-level dialogue on promoting India–Nepal cross-border tourism, trade, and industry

Cross-border tourism and regional cooperation are priority areas of the KLCDI – part of its overarching goal to further landscape-level ...

17 Nov 2015 News
The Music in Ziro

  By 7am, we were in Ziro. Rubu got us on the road that crisscrossed the vast horizon of paddy fields. ...

ICIMOD raises Mountain Agenda at the Global Solutions Summit

On the first day of the summit, ICIMOD hosted a panel session focused on challenges and solutions in the context ...

25 Jan 2016 News
Recharging Springs and Ponds in the Mid-hills

Officials from Dapcha Kashikhanda Municipality in Kavre District have integrated the construction of recharge ponds into next year’s ward and ...

24 Aug 2018 News
Highlighting Need for Sustainable Tourism at Global Adventure and Mountaineering Expo

Molden’s talk was titled Climate+Change and Sustainable Tourism: A regional cooperation perspective in the Hindu Kush Himalaya Region. Its key ...

11 Sep 2013 HICAP
Valuating ecosystem services in Koshi River Basin

A joint research team from CICERO, GRID-Arendal, ICIMOD, and other partners within ...

23 Jun 2016 News
Cryosphere Data Release

Open access to high-elevation meteorological data and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) data from the Himalayas Meteorological data is scarce in high-elevation ...

15 Apr 2015 News
Mobilizing early response for combating forest fire

The SERVIR-Himalaya Initiative of ICIMOD, in collaboration with theDepartment of Forests (DoF) of Nepal, carried out field level awareness campaign in ...