Issue Brief III: India and China in the Arctic

India and China, though non-Arctic states, have been active in the Arctic region. Both these countries were granted an ‘Observer’ status in the Arctic Council, a forum of all Arctic nations. India’s prime interest in Arctic is scientific as the changing climate can affect its monsoonal pattern and impact its food security. China’s main interest is strategic and economic development of Arctic as well as climate change and has clear policy on these aspects. India is in process of formulating its policy; it has already prepared a draft. Various aspects of India and China’s engagements in Arctic have been discussed. The development of the Arctic should be for a global good, while preserving its environment

Charting a new course for the oceans- Preface to the Special Section on "Sustainable ocean technologies"

What is the role of oceans in shaping our future and ensuring sustainability of the planet Earth? We know that life originated in the ocean almost three billion years earlier than on land which means that oceans make the planet Earth habitable. We need to focus our attention on ‘oceans’ as they control weather, climate and hazards, provide us energy, food and mineral resources as well as an ecosystem to survive

Addressing resilience to cyclones - a perspective

Cyclone is one of the major natural hazards that threatens human lives, livestock, agriculture, infrastructure, buildings, forest and wild life in coastal areas. As the Bay of Bengal basin is more prone to cyclogenesis compared to the Arabian Sea, the East coast of India has been more vulnerable to cyclones than the West coast. During the last two decades or so, the intensity of cyclones has increased mainly over the North Indian Ocean. It could be attributed to warming of seas among other factors. The stronger winds resulted in higher storm surges and waves, which led to deeper inundation of inland areas and made coastal regions highly vulnerable. We have to live with the hazards of cyclones and prepare ourselves to build resilience, especially to save lives. The impacts of cyclones are through strong winds, storm surges, heavy rainfall and floods. Hence, in order to build effective response mechanism, we need to assess our vulnerability to such events

Towards Blue Economy: A Perspective

The term ‘Blue Economy’ emphasizes essentially an ocean-dependent economic development to improve quality of life of people. India committed to advance the “Blue Economy” and several programs have been initiated to promote blue economy in the country. One of the important components of promoting blue economy is to have adequate information about sea bed and mineral resources, in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Legal Continental Shelf as well as High Seas. Apart from placer minerals on the coast, we need to explore for minerals, such as manganese nodules, polymetallic sulphides and cobalt crusts in High Seas. The availability of gas hydrates on our continental shelf has huge potential to satisfy our ever-increasing energy requirements. We need to invest in developing technology and human resources to utilize these resources. At the same time, the development of offshore mineral and energy resources will need setting up of infrastructure facilities on the coast. As coastal zone is vulnerable to many hazards such as cyclones, storm surges, tsunamis, coastal erosion, sea level rise, etc., an assessment of coastal vulnerability to understand risks involved, has to be undertaken. Various environmental data will be required to utilize ocean resources. An institutional framework for implementing activities related to blue economy to be set up so that investments in building infrastructure, developing human resources, and setting up governance system shall pay rich dividends for future generations and ensure sustainabilit

Development and Adhesion Strength of Plasma-Sprayed Thermal Barrier Coating on the Cast Iron Substrate

In the present scenario, the atmospheric plasma spray is used as a very important and effective weapon to produce the thermal barrier coating (TBC) on the substrate which will impart required surface characteristics to the components which are demanded by the industry. The TBC is used to impart the required characteristic such as wear, corrosion and thermal resistance to the hot section component where these will undergo severe service condition at elevated temperature. Research is carried out to replace the conventional liners in the I.C Engine by the thermal barrier coated ceramic liner. To achieve this, in this work Cast Iron substrate is used and it has been coated with a thermal barrier coating with the help of Atmospheric plasma spraying. These consisting of equal-proportion YSZ and pure alumina as topcoat ceramic material and in-between these topcoat and substrate there will be two bond coat first bond coat is Nickel Iron Aluminium Composite Powder (Metco 452) between the substrate and second bond coat. Second is  Alumina Nickel Aluminide powder blend (Metco 410 NS) between the topcoat and first bond coat. Coatings were subjected to microstructure analysis, porosity and adhesion strength. In this work, top coating thickness ie. 300µm exhibits more percentage of porosity ie.4.2% than other two coating thickness 200 and 100 µm  3.9% and 3.5% respectively. The bond coat will possess porosity percentage of  4.0 %, 3.5 % and 3 % for C3, C2 and C1 respectively. The adhesion strength test of the coatings was conducted and determined by the help of varying the topcoat thickness from 100µm to 300 µm with a step of 100 µm. In this work, it was established that the topcoat with the 100 µm exhibits the very good bond strength 70.81 MPa when compared with other two coating thickness 200µm and 300 µm have the adhesion strength 69.1 MPa and 65.52 MPa respectively. ASTM C 633 standard is used to prepare and conduct the test

Deep Scientific Drilling to Study Reservoir-Triggered Earthquakes in Koyna, Western India

No abstract available. doi:10.2204/iodp.sd.12.07.2011</a

Near real-time determination of earthquake source parameters for tsunami early warning from geodetic observations

Exemplifying the tsunami source immediately after an earthquake is the most critical component of tsunami early warning, as not every earthquake generates a tsunami. After a major under sea earthquake, it is very important to determine whether or not it has actually triggered the deadly wave. The near real-time observations from near field networks such as strong motion and Global Positioning System (GPS) allows rapid determination of fault geometry. Here we present a complete processing chain of Indian Tsunami Early Warning System (ITEWS), starting from acquisition of geodetic raw data, processing, inversion and simulating the situation as it would be at warning center during any major earthquake. We determine the earthquake moment magnitude and generate the centroid moment tensor solution using a novel approach which are the key elements for tsunami early warning. Though the well established seismic monitoring network, numerical modeling and dissemination system are currently capable to provide tsunami warnings to most of the countries in and around the Indian Ocean, the study highlights the critical role of geodetic observations in determination of tsunami source for high-quality forecasting

Women in leadership: Achieving sustainable future in a post-COVID-19 world

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the worst episodes ever faced by humankind during the last hundred years or so. Its impact on humans has threatened the existing social system, which in turn affects sustainable development of the society. India and the world today have been facing daunting challenges of managing natural hazards and climate change. As we are navigating ways to recover from this health disaster and build a resilient society, there is an opportunity to address issues of sustainable development. Foundations of building such a society must be based on bringing women to the forefront of decision- making and implementing new structural solutions. In what follows, we argue that the efforts to mitigate climate change and inequality have to consider women empowerment as the central agenda, failing which either aspect of sustainability cannot be achieved