Alongside King’s College London (KCL), BGS has signed memoranda of understanding (MoU) with the Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita). The three institutions will be collaborating on landslide research activities that will mutually benefit India and the UK.
The main aim is to develop regional thresholds for landslide warnings from the real-time data of Amrita’s field deployments in the Himalayas and the Western Ghats.
Landslides are considered the third most deadly natural disaster on Earth. Four hundred billion dollars are spent every year on landslide disaster management. Multiple collaborative and interdisciplinary research initiatives play a pivotal role in addressing these challenges.
Further to the ongoing collaborative activities between Amrita and BGS such as the LANDSLIP project, an MoU was signed between the two institutions confirming their mutual interest in developing and reinforcing their cooperation in the fields of earth sciences, mineral prospecting and disaster management. Dr Maneesha V Ramesh, dean of international programs and director of the Center for Wireless Networks and Applications, Amrita, and Prof Christopher Luton, head of legal services at the BGS, signed the MoU on 14 February 2019.
The MoU is also an effort to improve cooperation between the UK and the Republic of lndia, with the intent of reinforcing and strengthening scientific links between the two countries.
It is a prestigious moment for Amrita, being the first university in India to have signed an MoU with the British Geological Survey. We are looking forward to different forms of cooperation and collaborative activities under this MoU such as education, training and human resource development in the fields of landslide monitoring and research.
Some specific areas of cooperation being focused on under this MoU include susceptibility, hazard and risk mapping; early warnings for landslide hazards; stakeholder communication or dissemination for early warning information (e g. geohazards); geoscience information, and related informatics associated with landslide hazards.
Dr Maneesha V Ramesh, dean of international programs and director of the Center for Wireless Networks and Applications, Amrita.
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The British Geological Survey (BGS) is a world leading applied geoscience research centre that is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and affiliated to the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). BGS core science provides objective and authoritative geoscientific data, information and knowledge to inform UK Government on the opportunities and challenges of the subsurface. It undertakes national and public good research to understand earth and environmental processes in the UK and globally. The BGS annual budget of approximately £60 million pa is funded directly by UKRI, as well as research grants, government commissions and private sector contracts. Its 650 staff work across the UK with two main sites, the head office in Nottingham and Lyell Centre, a joint collaboration with Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. BGS works with more than 150 private sector organisations, has close links to 40 universities and sponsors about 100 PhD students each year. Please see www.bgs.ac.uk.