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The Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), in collaboration with LANDSLIP (Landslide Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment, Preparedness and Early Warning in South Asia: Integrating Meteorology, Landscape and Society), organized a day-long national stakeholders workshop on 20 January 2017.

A part of the workshop was also devoted to an inception meeting of a four year research project, funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) and the Department for International Development (DFID), UK, under the Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience (SHEAR) programme, is essentially aimed at protecting lives, livelihoods and the local economy of vulnerable landslide-prone communities in India. The project, envisaging a consortium of 36 scientists representing nine organizations in the UK, Italy and India – Amrita University (India), Newcastle University (UK), Consiglio Nazionaledelle Ricerche (Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection in Italy), among others, will be co-led by Prof. Bruce D. Malamud, Professor of Natural and Environmental Hazards (Department of Geography, King’s College, London) and Dr. Helen Reeves, Science Director, Engineering Geology, British Geological Survey. The project aims at enhancing landslide related multi-hazard risk assessment and monitoring in India in two main study regions, viz, the Nilgiris and Darjeeling/East Sikkim. The focus is on weather regimes, landslide domains and thresholds, societal factors and the interaction of ’cascading’ hazards; exploring replicability of methodologies developed for other landslide prone regions such as Uttarakhand; strengthening understanding of the underlying drivers of risk toward more integrated, multi-hazard landslide risk-monitoring and warning systems; getting the right landslide information to the right people in the right ways; and, disseminating LANDSLIP project knowledge to the wider region of South Asia - in particular, Afghanistan - among other issues.

Besides holding an open house discussion on landslide related risks, awareness etc., the event was also marked by signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the British Geological Survey (BSI) and the Geological survey of India (GSI) and exchanging of signed documents. Key speakers to the workshop included General NC Vij, Director, VIF, Prof. Bruce D. Malamud and Dr. Helen Reeves, among others. Senior officials, including Dr. Niranjan Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Mines, Dr Saibal Ghosh, Suprintending Geologist, Geological Survey of India, and UK Met officials, were also present during the workshop.