New Bt5bn centre to predict flooding
Pongphon Sarnsamak
The Nation



BANGKOK: -- The Water and Climate Information Centre opened yesterday with the key mission of predicting floods in the Chao Phraya River basin.

The centre will collect and analyse all data related to water flow and flooding in the river basin from 12 relevant agencies, including the Royal Irrigation Department, Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry, Meteorological Depart-ment, Hydrographic Department, Marine Department, and Bangkok Drainage and Sewerage Depart-ment.

The centre will then analyse the data, which will be used by the Water and Flood Management Commission to help formulate a strategy for tackling water issues such as floods and droughts.

More than Bt1.9 billion of the government's Bt120-billion anti-flood budget has been used to set up the centre, located at Soi Rang-Nam. It will be run by the Science and Technology Ministry's Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute (HAII) and Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA).

"We will use all the data and information available to deliver forecasts for flooding in and beyond a 45-day window," said HAII director Royol Jitdon.

"As a result we should know the exact time and place that floods will hit and be able to deal with the situation immediately," he added.

Systems used to collect, analyse and manage the data include unmanned aerial drones, hydrographic survey boats, water-metre stations, closed-circuit TV, satellite images and automated sluice gates.

To date, over 600 water-metre stations have been installed in Bangkok and on main rivers across the country. The centre has already surveyed 5,600 kilometres of rivers in the capital and nearby cities for depth and conditions.

However, Royol said the centre's data system needed better technology to improve its capacity to forecast and estimate water- and climate-related crises.

He said the Bt5-billion centre was launched in a bid to create a single nationwide information resource for authorities and was part of the government's wider Bt350-billion water and flood management project.

Anond Snidvongs, GISTDA director, has raised his concern over the centre's security protection system, which he said might not be strong enough to withstand attacks from hackers. "We need time to improve the system," he said.


-- The Nation 2013-02-28

I seem to remember they predicted the last last big one quite well.

They just failed to use the information in a constructive manner.

I can tell them for much cheaper price that its going to rain/flood someday in the future.

my price is 1 billion bath.

"As a result we should know the exact time and place that floods will hit and be able to deal with the situation immediately," he added.

If NASA finds out about these guys they may engage them to work out the next space launch and landing on Mars.

I can tell them for much cheaper price that its going to rain/flood someday in the future.

my price is 1 billion bath.

A big flood & you'll have enough water for 1 billion baths

Food prediction center? is this going to end up like the tsunami waring systems in Phuket

that got all the equipments stolen from right underneath the official's noses?

Another impossibly impossible expenditure being justified. Why not relocate the squatters for half that cost and use some civil engineering to widen the canals. It's one helluva expensive 'office' to house public servants for a few months a year.

That's a damn expensive crystal ball..

I can see them all standing at the windows watching it rain while sipping their coffees and asking each other if they think it will rain enough to cause any flooding. What another great waste of money and the 30% take from the cost just makes it worse.

I can tell them for much cheaper price that its going to rain/flood someday in the future.

my price is 1 billion bath.

And for an additional 500 Millions I'll tell that the raining season have the highest risk.

I can see them all standing at the windows watching it rain while sipping their coffees and asking each other if they think it will rain enough to cause any flooding. What another great waste of money and the 30% take from the cost just makes it worse.

No the 30 % take doesn't make it worse....It won't work if they take 100 %, 50 % or just 30 %.

It has been raining for how many thousand years now in Siam and folks cannot remember from one year to the next where water goes? Cannot associate water flow with gravity? Cannot use Google to see elevations? Cannot watch weather radar on wunderground.com? Cannot track storms passing over Philappines, VN, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, China, and Malaysia? Cannot enforce evacuations ahead of time? Ah, and therein lies the rub. Ahead of time. That would require an understanding of planning and preventative measures instead of reliance on amulets and reacting. So, the metdhod in the madness is that floods are big money for those that have their fingers on the purse strings of relief money. Imagine, 30% of all that emergency relief money flowing in from America, Europe, and the rest of Asia. You probably wouldn't stop the flooding either if you had the 30%.

simple - Plodprasop buys a pine cone and distributes the remainder

Anond Snidvongs, GISTDA director, has raised his concern over the centre's security protection system, which he said might not be strong enough to withstand attacks from hackers. "We need time to improve the system," he said.

Although a concern, it's not as if the data is so enormously important, like personel records, bank info, etc. Also I would assume that most systems are behind firewalls within a private network, some systems on separate local netowrks, and all carrying their own laptop with virusses of course

A lottery prediction centre would have been so much more popular.

Thought we were going to have all the anti flood work completed in 3 years.

Then this lot will be redundant, right?

It has been raining for how many thousand years now in Siam and folks cannot remember from one year to the next where water goes? Cannot associate water flow with gravity? Cannot use Google to see elevations? Cannot watch weather radar on wunderground.com? Cannot track storms passing over Philappines, VN, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, China, and Malaysia? Cannot enforce evacuations ahead of time? Ah, and therein lies the rub. Ahead of time. That would require an understanding of planning and preventative measures instead of reliance on amulets and reacting. So, the metdhod in the madness is that floods are big money for those that have their fingers on the purse strings of relief money. Imagine, 30% of all that emergency relief money flowing in from America, Europe, and the rest of Asia. You probably wouldn't stop the flooding either if you had the 30%.

You don't want them to burn their last remaining brain cells, do you now?

Obviously paying someone 300 baht a day to go and look at a water level meter and a rain guage is too much.

I seem to remember they predicted the last last big one quite well.

They just failed to use the information in a constructive manner.

It not an exensive centre they need it's personnel who know what they're doing.

And FIVE BILLION? That's a hefty price even allowing for the 'Thirty percenters'.

what flooding?

5 billion for that ? could they not hire the local fortune teller?

5 billion for that ? could they not hire the local fortune teller?

Judging from the last flood that is what they did.

5 Billion Baht, 5,000,000,000 to predict when to start a few tug boat props, cough cough

"As a result we should know the exact time and place that floods will hit and be able to deal with the situation immediately," he added.

He forgot to add this bit at the end of the sentence:

"And if there is flooding that we did not predict, I will resign because I am the person responsible for 5 billion baht of taxpayer's money."

I hope they have a hot line to Banharn

I seem to remember they predicted the last last big one quite well.

They just failed to use the information in a constructive manner.

Well no they didn't, they predicted there would be a flood last year which never happened other than that caused by local heavy rain in BKK.

They wanted to lower the dams down to 30% and In fact they were warned by the King among others not to do it and that there would be no flood instead they should conserve water because there would be a drought which we have now.