The National Hydrology Project (NHP) sponsored by Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation (DoWR, RD&GR), Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India (GOI) with financial aid from the World Bank. The objective of the project is to improve the extent and accessibility of water resources information and strengthen institutional capacity to enable improved water resources planning and management across India. The mission is to establish an effective and sound hydrologic database and Hydrological Information System (HIS), together with the development of consistent and scientifically based tools and design aids, to assist in the effective water resources planning and management of the implementing agencies. NHP is intended for setting up of a system for timely and reliable water resources data acquisition, storage, collation
and management. It will also provide tools/systems for informed decision making through Decision Support Systems (DSS) for water resources assessment, flood management, reservoir operations, drought management, etc. NHP also seeks to build capacity of the State and Central sector organisations in water resources management through the use of Information Systems and adoption of State-of-the-art technologies like Remote Sensing. NHP will improve and expand hydrology data and information systems, strengthen water resources operation and planning systems, and enhance institutional capacity for water resources management. NHP will contribute to the GOI Digital India initiative by integrating water resources information across State and Central agencies. As part of various NHP technical studies carried out, NRSC has taken up “Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) Risk
Assessment of Glacial Lakes in the Himalayan Region of Indian River Basins”. In this activity, it was proposed to prepare an updated inventory of glacial lakes, prioritization and selection of critical glacial lakes based on certain characteristics (such as glacial lake, glacier, topography and others), GLOF modelling and flood inundation simulation for selected few lakes using high resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for downstream of the lakes along their river reach, and to assess GLOF risk.