Page 93 - Smart City Brochure Inputs

6.1. Glacier Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) [Pune]
The acronym GLOF is used for glacier floods caused by the drainage of naturally dammed lakes in
the glacier, on or at the margin of glaciers.

A lake outburst can be triggered by several factors: ice or rock avalanches, the collapse of the
moraine dams due to the melting of ice buried within, the washing out of fine material by springs
flowing through the dam (piping), earthquakes or sudden inputs of water into the lake e.g. through
heavy rains or drainage from lakes further up-glacier. The glacier lake may breach at the end-
moraine or at the lateral moraine.
CDAC’s GLOFs will help the Government authorities in case of an impending GLOF event. The
GLOF Early Warning System has the following capabilities:
• Water Level Sensors developed indigenously by C-DAC
• The near-real time sensors transmit data through INSAT satellite to control centre
• The flood simulation model runs the simulation for various GLOF scenarios. The model is
capable of presenting Flood Simulation, Inundation information and Flood Arrival Time in the
event of a glacier lake outburst flood

The GLOF Analysis Tool is the main interface of the GLOF Management System. The GLOF
Analysis Tool has three sub-tools: Lake Information, Simulation & the Sensor Information.

The "Lake Information" tool gives basic information about the glacial lake selected by the user
from the drop-down menu, such as, Lake Name, Lake Condition, etc. The satellite image of the
glacial lake is shown on the right hand side.

The “Simulate” tool gives information regarding the GLOF simulation progress and the outputs of
the simulation. The user will be able to see the time at which the GLOF at a particular glacial lake
occurred and the period of GLOF simulation. The user can choose to see the simulation results
such as Simulation video, Inundation map, Inundation report & Hydrographs.

The “Sensor Information” tool gives basic information about the sensors deployed at the glacial
lakes for monitoring water-levels. Each sensor has a Sensor ID linked to the Lake ID. The user may
add information of new sensors when sensors are deployed on new glacial lakes in future or delete
existing ones, in case if they are decommissioned.

The “Settings” tool gives the user the flexibility to load the input data from any location on the
computer. The data will be copied to an in-built database system for computations.

Website: https://cdac.in/index.aspx?id=st_ssdm_ssdm_glof

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