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

10 Dec 2015 News
HICAP South-South Dialogue on Managing Wetlands in the Himalayas

ICIMOD, as a regional intergovernmental learning and knowledge sharing centre in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, has taken various steps ...

14 Jun 2016 Water and air
Spring Management in Darchula

At daybreak, the villagers, mostly women and children, come out carrying containers of different shapes and sizes. They walk to ...

5 Feb 2024 News
Personal visit by Director-General of FAO signals new era in cooperation

The MOU commits both bodies to pool expertise, knowledge, innovation, technology and networks to strengthen food production and community resilience, ...

2 Jan 2015 News
Promoting regional efforts to reduce flood vulnerabilities

This final SRC meeting of the current phase was held from 22 to 24 September 2014 at the ...

16 Apr 2015 News
Women learn to invest in flood preparedness

ICIMOD, in partnership with the Institute of Integrated Resource Management (IIRM) and Swayam Sikshyan Prayog (SSP), conducted flood preparedness training ...

13 Jun 2017 Atmosphere Initiative
Creating New Data Sets for Emissions Inventory

In Nepal, many community forests are involved in the production of charcoal from forest materials generated from the annual cutting ...

8 Mar 2019 Gender in Koshi
Balance for better: Community enterprise for strengthening women entrepreneurship in Nepal

Business has largely been dominated by men across the world, and Nepal is no exception. Women usually need to be ...