Bangladesh being a flood prone country, flood forecast and early warning is of great importance for reducing the loss of lives and property of people. The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC) of the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) provides flood forecast information at river level, but no effective dissemination system exists to deliver forecasts at community level. CEGIS has designed a Community Flood Information System (CFIS) as a pilot operational system. The function of the system is to reduce vulnerability and enable people to save their assets by producing accurate and timely flood information using easily understandable mobile SMS.
The system is supported by forecast information from the FFWC and the SMS facilities are provided by Banglalink. At the heart of CFIS is a GIS based simple relational model called ‘WATSURF’ that can transfer and translate river water levels to floodplain locations. WATSURF creates location specific SMS for 72 hours and can transmit to mobile phones of flag operators, Union Parishads and selected community people. The flag operators are selected by the respective communities to receive SMS and operate flags and bulletin boards to provide local flood forecast. The SMS contains only the name of the unions and symbols for water levels (the ‘+’ sign for rising water level and the ‘-‘ sign for falling water level) for the next 72 hours. One + or - symbol indicates 9 inch of water rise or fall respectively.
This makes the SMS simple, locally effective and understandable even by illiterate people. The system has been implemented on a pilot basis and the future challenge is to replicate it all over Bangladesh.