Government Introduces C-FLOOD Platform for Delivering Flood Warnings to Rural Areas 48 Hours Ahead
Published on July 3, 2025
In the heart of monsoon-prone India, a unified inundation forecasting system named C-FLOOD is making a significant impact. This state-of-the-art platform, inaugurated by Union Jal Shakti Minister C. R. Patil on June 2, 2025, in New Delhi, is playing a crucial role in managing urban floods, particularly in vulnerable regions like Delhi-NCR.
Recent events, such as the heavy monsoon rains causing severe waterlogging in Delhi-NCR, have been addressed with alerts issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), which integrates data from systems including C-FLOOD for real-time inundation forecasting and flood alerts.
C-FLOOD's operational role in mitigating flood impacts through early warnings is evident. The system, designed to provide unified forecasts by combining rainfall, river flow, and flood inundation models, is currently operational in the Mahanadi, Godavari, and Tapi river basins. Models developed by the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) under the National Hydrology Project support the Godavari and Tapi basins. Simulations for the Mahanadi Basin are run on C-DAC's supercomputing infrastructure.
Minister Patil has praised the joint efforts of the Central Water Commission (CWC), C-DAC, and NRSC in operationalising the C-FLOOD system. He also called for rapid integration of flood forecasts into the National Disaster Management Emergency Response Portal (NDEM) and urged improvements in accuracy using satellite validation and ground-truthing.
As the monsoon season persists across many regions of Northwest, Central, and East India, the need for such a system becomes increasingly apparent. The Minister reiterated the government's focus on proactive disaster management and directed the CWC and allied agencies to ensure wide publicity of the C-FLOOD portal.
While the current status of C-FLOOD reflects its operational role in mitigating flood impacts, specific details about recent expansion plans or upgrades to the system are not publicly available. It is likely that authorities are considering or implementing enhancements to C-FLOOD to expand coverage and improve forecasting accuracy. Typical expansion plans for such systems involve incorporating more high-resolution rainfall and hydrological data, extending forecasting capabilities to additional vulnerable regions, integrating satellite and ground-sensor data for better real-time updates, and enhancing dissemination channels for alerts to local communities and disaster response agencies.
For the latest and precise developments, monitoring official sources from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, IMD, or the National Disaster Management Authority would be necessary. The National Supercomputing Mission, a collaborative project between the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Science and Technology, is instrumental in supporting C-FLOOD's computational needs.
The integration of environmental science, specifically climate-change data, into the unified inundation forecasting system C-FLOOD could enhance its capabilities in predicting flood risks in various river basins. Given the increasing Focus on technology in disaster management, further upgrades to C-FLOOD's systems, such as acquiring high-resolution data, expanding forecasting capabilities, and enhancing dissemination channels, might be under consideration to improve accuracy and coverage.
