PRAVAAHA 2022

The Department of Hydrology celebrated World Water Day by organizing its first-ever three-day Water Tech Fest, named “Pravaaha" on March 20-22, 2022. Through workshops, keynote talks, water competitions, and research presentations, Pravaaha aimed to raise awareness and encourage students to think creatively about how to solve water-related problems. The 49th and the 50th batch of Hydrology program and the 1st batch of Dam Safety and Rehabilitation program came together to organize this Techfest. The Pravaaha aimed to promote awareness, and create creative and innovative thinking among the students, as the water sector grows itself to new challenges every day. The three-day event spanned from various workshops (hands-on sessions) on the first day followed by the Techfest events on the second day and finally the World Water Day celebration along with the Research Scholar’s Day on the final day. The workshops on “Introduction to Google Earth Engine and first ever Cloud based Rainfall – Runoff Model” and “Introduction to TUFLOW” had a large number of registrations from students (UG, PG, PhDs), working professionals, faculty and scientists from all over India and abroad. The second day marked the three technical events – “AquaSpark”, “Data Wrangling” and “Bhuchitra”. The day started with a Keynote talk by “Paani Foundation”. Data-Wrangling aimed to explore the skills on data-science for hydrological data pre-processing. Bhuchitra aimed to explore the GIS tools and the open-source remote sensing satellite data for mapping India’s resources, agriculture, climate and disaster management, rural and urban planning and determining the future growth pathways. All the three events saw enormous participation from students from all parts of the country.

Final Day marked the celebration of World Water Day and Research Scholar’s Day, with an Inaugural speech by Prof Manoranjan Parida, Deputy Director of the institute and Prof. Brijesh Kumar Yada, Head, Department of Hydrology. The inaugural was followed by a keynote talk from our distinguished alumni, Sh. Bhopal Singh, Director General, NWDA. The PhD and M. Tech students along with a visiting student from Germany presented their research work. In the afternoon session, Dr Carlos A Rivera Villarreyes of DHI presented a keynote talk on “Groundwater modelling and seepage in Dams”. Final Keynote talk by Dr Anil Mishra, Chief of Section, Hydrological Systems and Water Scarcity Sections (HSS), UNSECO concluded the day.