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Vulnerable: While rain and earthquake cause rockfall, roads and hydropower projects are also destabilising hill slopes. Tribune photo
KK Kapila
President Emeritus, International Road Federation
The recent incidents of landslides, cloudbursts and flooding in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir, resulting in a heavy loss of life and property, have again put the spotlight on the need for early detection, warning and prevention system and adopting time-tested sustainable solutions, including zoning maps of landslides, floodplain mapping and taking flood-proofing measures.
It’s high time we used sustainable solutions and ecologically proven techniques for avoiding flood-related disasters each year and also turn to apt investigative tools in determining causes for failure. Depending on the causes, proven technologies that meet specific needs have to be adopted so that the hill states sharing borders with neighbouring countries have all-weather roads and sustainable infrastructure.