With less than 60 days left for the arrival of monsoon, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has ramped up its annual preparatory measures against flooding in Mumbai. However, besides installing a slew of dewatering pumps and carrying out interventions in flood-prone zones, the civic body has derived its own Artificial Intelligence (AI) model to keep a track of the ongoing desilting works and flag fraudulent practices.
The move comes at a time when the civic body has been under the scanner of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for a Rs 1,100 crore desilting scam. Desilting is a process of removal of silt, muck and sediments that get deposited at the beds of water bodies, including rivers and drains. These sediments slow down the pace of water flow, which in turn results in overflowing of water, thus leading to waterlogging in the city on the occasion of heavy rainfall during monsoon.
How AI is pushing transparency in desilting
To carry out desilting, the civic authorities appoint private contractors, who charge the BMC on the basis of the quantum of silt removed. Therefore, to ensure there are no fraudulent measures implemented by the contractors to inflate the silt quantum the civic authorities are relying heavily on the AI model.
From last year, the civic administration has mandated that the contractors should record the entire process of desilting — from removing the silt to loading them on trucks and transporting them to unloading them for disposal, in video footage — which are uploaded in the BMC’s portal and are scanned through AI.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Abhijit Bangar — additional municipal commissioner (Projects) said that the AI model scans through the footage and flags discrepancies. For example, if there is a video that shows a truck being loaded in less than 2 minutes, that footage is flagged, because it usually takes minimum 7-8 minutes to load a truck post desilting.
“As a fraudulent measure, some contractors mix silt with floating waste items to inflate the quantum of silt removed daily. Hence, waste is easier to load on a truck and the process is completed quickly. The AI model has been taught about this pattern therefore it flags critical time gaps easily in the system,” Bangar said.
“Often contractors upload an old video by copying it from a different device. The change in resolution or video quality gets caught in the system and is flagged immediately. Also, since silt is sediment in nature it doesn’t cause displacement of dust while loading and unloading, however when waste is mixed with it there is dust displacement. These effects show up in the video and the AI tool flags them immediately, following which the contractors are summoned,” Bangar added.
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This year, the civic authorities have brought down the pre-monsoon desilting target mark to 8.47 lakh metric tonnes (MT) from its 12.03 lakh MT target that was set last year. “We have brought down this margin to ensure there is transparency and the contractors get paid only on the basis of silt removed.” an official said.
Uniform desilting
Mumbai has a vast network of drains nullahs, with 261.52 km of major nullahs (over 1.5 metres wide) and 411.56 km of minor nullahs (less than 1.5 metres wide), along with other types of drains like arch and roadside drains. The overall network of drains in Mumbai stands at nearly 3,800 km.
Of the total 8.41 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of silt BMC will remove this year, 3.67 lakh MT will be removed from minor drains, 3.37 lakh MT will be removed from major drains and 1.32 lakh MT will be removed from the Mithi River.
Officials said that BMC is focusing towards declogging drainage choke points in various areas in Mumbai to counter the annual flooding woes as part of its pre monsoon desilting drive. As part of the drive, the civic authorities have identified Mumbai’s Saki Naka and Kurla areas which have a significant number of choke points in the drains.
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“There are several drains in Saki Naka and Andheri which are covered under conventional culverts, due to which our machines can’t enter it to desilt them and due to irregular maintenance the drains have been choked to an extent the water flowing through gets clogged resulting in overflow and flooding of the area,” an official said.
He added that to counter this issue, the civic authorities will unclog these culverts by deploying manual machinery in order to remove the accumulated solid waste that mainly comprises plastic items. Furthermore, the officials also stated a targeted approach is being made in all the low lying embankments adjoining the Mithi river to mitigate flooding.
Vehicle-mounted pumps
Furthermore, the officials added that this year as many as 547 dewatering pumps will be installed in several low lying areas in Mumbai, in a bid to abate flooding woes. This will be the highest number of dewatering pumps to be deployed in Mumbai during the last three years.
In addition to this the civic authorities will also deploy 14 vehicle mounted mobile pumping units in Mumbai. These are portable pumping stations that are mounted on a vehicle, mainly trucks, and are used to remove water from places with challenging topography, which includes complex mining areas, construction sites, excavation pits and flood-affected areas.
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The vehicles on which these pumps are mounted can manoeuvre through narrow, dingy lanes and congested areas. They will be leased for a four-year period at a cost of Rs 8.8 crore.
“Several pockets record excessive flooding and waterlogging during a moderate or heavy spell of rain. Often, these spots are not mapped as chronic waterlogged areas, therefore, conventional pumps are not set up there. As a result, there is a need to deploy additional countermeasures to abate the flooding in those areas,”
On an average Mumbai records 16 days every year where the daily rainfall limit exceeds 100 mm figures and according to the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP) 35 percent of Mumbai’s population live in flood prone zones.
Speaking to The Indian Express, senior BMC officials attributed the need to deploy more pumps to higher demands from ward officials. “Ongoing construction at the ward level for projects like Metro, roads and bridges has increased flood-prone locations in several wards,” an official said.
