MoU with Anna University in India and NGI

NGI has signed an MoU with Anna University  to enhance its existing technical  cooperation on disaster risk reduction.

From left: Hans Borchgrevink, The Research Council of Norway, Farrokh Nadim, NGI/ICG and Dr. Mannar Jawahar with the signed MoU in the Terzaghi Library at NGI.

With over half a million students under its umbrella of affiliated engineering colleges in the Southern State of Tamil Nadu in India, Anna University is the largest technical University in Asia. The Vice-Chancellor of Anna University Dr. P. Mannar Jawahar visited to NGI on the 24th of September 2009 to sign the MoU. The signing ceremony was witnessed by a senior representative of the Research Council of Norway, Dr. Hans Borchgrevink.

Anna University is a major recipient of research funds from the Department of Science and Technology in India (DST), with which NGI has been collaborating since 2004. Rajinder Bhasin is the project leader at NGI for this cooperation. The key areas of collaboration have been Tsunami modeling and landslide mitigation. The institute of remote sensing (IRS) at Anna University has been performing Tsunami wave propagation modeling using the MIKE 21 software and comparing the results with University of Oslo/ NGI's GloBuss model.

The co-operation project has resulted in proposing tsunami mitigation measures along the sections of the affected coast in the state of Tamil Nadu. NGI in co-operation with IRS at Anna University plans to monitor critical landslides in India through SAR interferometry and ground based instrumentation for developing early warning systems.

Slice plot of Indian ocean tsunami scenario (left), and Uttarkashi Landslide in India (right)