New advisory system for fishermen

A new advanced warning and advisory system with better broadcasting of weather alerts has been launched by INCOIS (Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services) and AAI (Airport Authority of India). This will benefit the fishermen who go out for multiday fishing. This system will aid in preventing loss of lives of fishermen due to delay in information dissemination. The death of fishermen who could not be informed about the approaching Cyclone Okhi in 2017 made the government realize about the shortcomings in present system of weather alert broadcast.

How will new system make a difference?

Currently, the fishermen are being informed about advancing storms and other weather forecast through Potential Fishing Zones (PFZ) advisories, ocean state forecasts, high wave alerts, Tsunami and storm surge early warning services etc. But these systems can disseminate message alerts upto a distance of only 12 kms from coasts. Hence the lives of fishermen who go several kms into the seas for multi day fishing are at risk. The new system will cover entire Indian Ocean region using GAGAN satellite system and fishermen in high seas can also be informed.

Operating mechanism of new advisory system:

Alert and warning advisories will be broadcasted on specially designed device GEMINI (GAGAN Enabled Mariners Instrument for Navigation and Information) using GAGAN satellite system. This device will diffuse information to mobiles through Bluetooth. A mobile application will then decrypt the information and then alert message will be displayed on mobiles.

GAGAN

GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation is joint project of ISRO and AAI (Airport Authority of India). This system comprises of three satellites GSAT-8, GSAT-10 and GSAT-15 placed in geo- synchronous orbits. This systems aims at deploying Satellite Based Augmented System (SBAS) for aviation industry. Apart from providing services to aviation sector this system also benefits other sectors like maritime, highways, railways, surveying, geodesy, security agencies etc

INCOIS

Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services is an autonomous institute established in 1999 and operates under Ministry of Earth sciences. This institute is commissioned to monitor the weather in Indian Ocean, release warnings and alerts to fishermen, conduct research and modeling for ocean forecasts etc.