Accessing the Data and Rainfall analysis for Halanayakanahalli Gram Panchayat data from Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Center (KSNDMC)

KSNDMC, as the name suggests, has a specific functionality towards the prediction and analysis of natural disasters that can occur, so that preemptive measures can be taken to minimize damage. For such a process, the organization is heavily dependent on scientific approaches using modern technology to record and collate data that can help in coming to educated conclusions. Therefore, KSNDMC is an autonomous institution established under Government of Karnataka. The institution maintains vast amount data pertaining to weather, droughts and other disasters like earthquakes, etc.; that can help in analysis for multiple entities. Here is a diagram articulating the different departments present-




Data Available: Our interaction with KSNDMC was pertaining to the rainfall and weather data specifically. The telemetric raingauge department, in the weather department of KSNDMC records daily rainfall data. In 2013 KSNDMC initiated a process for establishing telemetric rain gauges at every Panchayat in Karnataka to help the farmers in agriculture by providing rainfall data. In addition to telemetric raingauges at Panchayat level, the weather stations are also put up in BBMP wards in Bangalore urban and Bangalore Rural. So far 86 such stations exist in Bangalore urban taluk. The logged in weather data includes- temperature, wind direction, wind speed and humidity. The Panchayat raingauge data is available from last year (2014).The Hobli/taluk level data rainfall is available since the past 30 years.


Method of accessing data and Cost: KSNDMC are very approachable and are very open in sharing their data to various organizations. One of their purpose is to ensure the relevant people are aware of their finding and welcome anyone who wishes to contact them. When it comes to entities that are trusts or NGOs, students, researchers, etc. they do not charge a fee for the data. For private purposes, a fee of Rs. 250 per year of data is charged.

We were looking for rainfall data for Halanayakanahalli GP. We met Mr. Chetan and Ishwar from KSNDMC telemetric rain gauge department. We submitted a letter to them mentioning our data requirement i.e. Halanayakanahalli GP rainfall data since whenever it is available. Though both of them told us that even an email to dmc.kar@nic.in or dmc.kar@gmail.com requesting information would suffice. After 10 days, the data that we requested for was emailed to us in an excel sheet. Mr. Chetan also called up to ensure that the data has been received by us. The data was in a raw format with no further analysis. It clearly depicted the district, taluk and the hobli of the panchayat of our need, in our case, the Halanayajanahalli GP. Daily rainfall data and sum of monthly rainfall was provided to us since April 2015. 

Month	Rainfall (mm)	Rainfall days	Highest rainfall event (mm)
April	111.5	12	28.5
May	73.5	10	20
June	120	18	44.5
July	55.5	12	29
August	186.5	15	45.5
September	171.5	12	61.5
October	160	7	81.5
Total	878.5	86

Quick observations-

• Month of April (non-monsoon month) received 111.5 mm rainfall in 12 rainy days more than July (monsoon month) with 55.5 mm rainfall in 12 rainy days.
• June- September: 57 rainy days and 533.5 mm rainfall with August and September with high rainfall
• Highest rainfall event was seen in October with 81.5 mm rainfall on one day

The data proved to be really useful for our cause for analysis and appeared to be realistic if compared with an educated guess of the rain witnessed on particular days of rainfall events. Their response in sending the data was timely and as they had promised. The details about accessing the information can be obtained from contact details below:

Website: https://www.ksndmc.org
Contact: Chetan/Hemanth/Ishwar, Project Scientists
Contact Number: Chetan (+919538396256) / The toll free numbers on the website also work