#Thread Here's an incredible story about a young man who was busy with loading and unloading in #KeralaFloods relief centres. Only days later people came to know that he was none other than, Kannan Gopinathan, the Collector of Dadra & Nagar Haveli! (1/n)
He travelled in KSRTC buses and covered 5 districts in 10 days without revealing identity. He took leave for serving his homeland in the time of crisis. Kannan is a native of Kottayam. Even his relatives were not aware of his unofficial visit! (2/n)
It was only after Eranakulam Collector Y.Safirulla's visit to centre at KBPS press, the volunteers of the camp came to know that the guy who was helping in loading goods was an IAS officer! (3/n)
Whenever people asked him the whereabouts, he introduced himself as a person from some NGOs. He was the driving force in collecting Rs.1 crore and loads of relief materials from Dadra& Nagar Haveli for Kerala. (4/n)
Here's the story appeared earlier on his earlier creative contributions when he was the collector at Aizawl, Mizoram. He developed mobile app to alert people on natural disasters and to know the status of power supply in his district, and lot more! (5/n)
He travelled all the way through the most of the flooded areas. In some areas he served MSF doctors as a translator. In some other camps, as a volunteer helping loading the relief materials. (6/n)
Here's the interesting fact: Many of the relief camps Kannan worked were headed by his IAS batch mates! Only few of them knew that he was here in Kerala as a volunteer. (7/n)
Sorry! I missed to tag Kannan Gopinathan's handle: @naukarshah (8/n)
Here's Alappuzha District Collector S.Suhas' facebook post after reading about the incognito visit of his batch mate Kannan from newspapers! (9/n)
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#Thread As Kerala is recovering from the devastating floods, a Kasargodu native is heading India's first comprehensive flood monitoring system in Kolkata funded by Asian Development Bank. Follow the thread for more about the project which will be functional from next month.(1/n)
Gopalakrishna Bhatt, A hydro geologist from Badiyaduka is the technical consultant of the project. It has been designed to provide forecasts as well as real-time updates from sensor
nodes installed in key points throughout the city. Read Here:manoramaonline.com/news/latest-ne… (2/n)
The system includes: weather forecasts; flood models for various intensities of rainfall; real-time information on
pump status, sump and canal water levels, actual rainfall, inundation levels,; and messaging system to provide warnings to officials and citizens. (3/n)
#Thread During #KeralaFloods many of the people lost their crucial documents. It was a big mess to recover these documents since they don't even remember the document no. Hence, Kerala IT department came up with an API architecture to retrieve the documents. (1/n)
The idea was generated jointly by IT secretary M.Sivasankar and KSUM CEO Saji Gopinath. The target was to retrieve the documents by taking the basic inpit values known to the public. It startes working last day (2/n)
Incase of Aadhaar, govt will take your biometrics as the input value to generate E-Aadhaar if one doesn't remember the ID number. This will be pushed into Digilocker account created. Also will get a print out for free of cost. (3/n)
#Thread#KeralaFloods Detailed thread to document the historic efforts of various online groups in rescue and relief operations. Trust me, Whatsapp and Google sheets were the powerful weapons we had. Pic: An online control room set by NRKs in house at Abu Dhabi (1/n)
It was the time we truly realised the power of social media and instant messaging services with regard to disaster management. Many were stranded on roof-tops without any other contact to the world other than their mobile phones. Whatsapp brilliantly solved the issue. (2/n)
Before going in detail let me point out the problem statements. 1) Govt issued some helpline numbers but most of them were busy with numerous calls 2) Thousands of SOS requests flooded in social media which were not addressed in a systematic manner, hence turned spams (3/n)
#Thread Went to Vizhinjam coast to meet the fishermen who took part in rescue mission in #KeralaFloods . We were filled with positive energy and happiness hearing their experiences (1/n)
We dedicated almost 2 pages for celebrating their mission.On Thursday 8.10 pm Fr.Justin Judin,vicar of Vizhinjam church announced the requirement for boats through public announcement system. In 20 minutes almost 50 boats and 100 fishermen were assembled. Military like formation!
Just see the Engine fan of a fishing boat which participated in the #KeralaFloods rescue mission. Most of the boats are damaged and they won't be able to go to sea for a while. I was blown away by their sacrifice (3/n)
#Thread We started our series on online bank frauds and data security with @LukasStefanko 's revelation on three fake Indian bank apps stealing sensitive data of hundreds of Indians. (1/n)
We also published an exclusive email interview with @LukasStefanko in which he alarms India regarding the upcoming bank frauds. (2/n)
We were shocked to know that per day bank frauds are looting 1.5 lakhs from Kerala. In 8 months starting from last August Rs 3 crores went to their accounts. Ernakulam and Trivandrum tops in the list with 80 and 70 lakhs respectively. (3/n)
Short-lived are the marks sea casts on a shore but not the memories it leaves on a coast. After a sail off the Poonthura shore with Rinku chettan (Photographer) on the hundredth day of Ockhi, we returned home with a heavy heart. (1/n)
After all the discussions about fishermen's safety and the promises government extended to the fisher-folk, not a single measure has been adopted to practicalise any of it. (2/n)
Our companion Andrews told us that a similar calamity can cause a graver damage even after a hundred days from now. (3/n)