And quite works IBM for a clean Ganga

BANGALORE, INDIA: It was a couple of months back, when the first phase of Anna Hazare's indefinite fast against corruption was in the initial stage, a Swami embraced death by fasting for the cause of Ganga.

Swami Nigmananda fasted for almost four months at a stretch to protest the illegal mining and stone crushing on the banks of the holy river near Haridwar, but no one heard him till he breathed his last.

This despite the commitment by the government that it will save the Ganga from pollution and further deterioration. It has even set up a project called ‘Mission Clean Ganga’, but the project, which has the support from a consortium of 7 IITs in the country, is yet to see the results.

However, IBM is confident about the project and it has become part of the Ganga Mission, joining hands with IIT-Kharagpur, a member of the consortium.

Talking to CIOL about the project, Dr. Bhooshan Kelkar, country manager, University Relations, IBM India/SA, said ‘Mission Clean Ganga’ is an ongoing project of national importance.

“The vision is to ensure by 2020, no municipal sewage and industrial waste is released in to Ganga without treatment. The total budget of this project is estimated to be around Rs 15,000 crore and has the support of the World Bank,” he said.

As part of the project, IBM is working with IIT-Kharagpur in data integration and analysis. The data related to the flow of water will be collected from sensors placed at appropriate points in the river bed and also the satellites, and the data thus collected is analyzed and managed is reconciled with the historical data.

Each partner IIT has taken up a specific task towards the cause. IBM India is working with IIT Kharagpur on integration of information collected from various data points (Satellite, Sensors etc) along the river and contributing in analytics on top of this data,” he added.

Kelkar said one of the key aspects of the project is predictive analysis of the flow/course of the river, and its impact on floods/droughts/vegetation patterns, etc.

“The task involves collecting data from multiple sources such as satellite data, data on water tables, vegetation, water flow patterns etc. The data will be monitored over due course of time and the historical data is used to identify trends and patterns in the volume and flow of the river at various points in time,” informed Kelkar.

IBM said this consolidated data is saved over a shared cloud — Intelligent management of data.

In this project, IBM India is offering its consulting expertise and also software tools/infrastructures required to integrate data from various sources into a common platform. The data is then analyzed with the help of advanced proprietary analytics tools to make intelligent predictions. The project is expected to be effective in pollution and flood control along the river.

He said IIT Kharagpur was selected for this project based on Shared University Research (SUR) Model.

“IIT Kharagpur has a long history of good research, is an institute of repute and is a respected seat of education in our country. Moreover, the computer science department as well as other departments involved including but not limited to the civil engineering department, have deep expertise needed for this challenging project,” added Kelkar.