Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

A British offer to help predict the path and extent of storm surges
in the Bay of Bengal, such as the one that engulfed Bangladesh’s coast this
week, was spurned two years ago by the Bangladeshi authorities, says the
scientist behind the proposal, Roger Flather of the Proudman Oceanographic
Laboratory on Merseyside.

‘Bangladesh’s current methods of predicting floods are very basic,’
Flather says. ‘They are especially weak on predicting extreme events. The
only practical means of saving life is to develop computer models capable
of simulating and predicting the water movements and associated sea-level
³¦³ó²¹²Ô²µ±ð²õ.’

The Proudman laboratory offered to help in 1988, after 3000 people drowned
when a cyclone struck the coastline of Bangladesh. But the country’s priority
since then has been to improve protection against floods inland, caused
by monsoon rains collected in the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. These floods
kill fewer people than coastal storms but threaten the capital Dhaka.

A national Flood Action Plan, published by the World Bank 18 months
ago, noted that coastal embankments built in the 1960s and 1970s are ‘now
in need of rehabilitation’.