Rivers from our Veins

The Atelier Arth pilot project.

Mission

The Rivers from our Veins initiative, or RiVeins, aims to demonstrate a cross-disciplinary human-centred approach towards flood mitigation, intersecting the arts and space technologies.

It does not aim to prevent floods but instead reduce the negative impact of this annual natural phenomenon.

The motto: “Let’s save not just lives but also livelihoods”.

Origin of the name: RiVeins

The profile of any river system looks remarkably similar to our vascular system, consisting of a main channel joined by smaller vessels/ tributaries.

Thus, just like the wellbeing of our body depends on our blood health, any ecosystem – our human settlements included – needs its nourishing river system to be healthy, which in turn requires that all its subcomponents work together in harmony…

RiVeins
(Original artwork @Priyanka Rajkakati, processed satellite image, 2022)

Art and Culture towards Climate Resilience

Any technical solution that is not adapted for the human and emotion-driven end-user, is unable to reach its full potential.

Indeed, it is quite important to bridge this gap in a sensitive manner, especially when the user is from the poorest communities, and often lacking any formal education.

These technologies require community-focused toolkits, infused with cultural narratives, that speak of practical standard operating procedures, but which enable the community to prepare for a potential flood and even evacuation.

This would be vital for externalizing social fears and misconceptions about floods and also bring about a change in thinking within the community.

Who better than artists to make this link between technology and society, who know how to weave dreams into the fabric of our existence?

Still floating
(Original artwork @Priyanka Rajkakati, ink on paper, 2022)

Brahmaputra by Sunrise (part of the LunARC lunar gallery)
(Original artwork @Priyanka Rajkakati, acrylic on card, 2023)

Scientific Concept

Aerial view of a portion of the river Brahmaputra in Assam, highlighting the topographical scale in question. (Credits: Google Maps)

Origins

The RiVeins experiment was born from a very basic thought experiment in 2022 and explored further as a Karman Project commitment, partly through work at vorteX-io.

Context: Assam. A biodiversity heaven in the northeast of India, nourished by the mighty Brahmaputra river, and home to 31.2 million people. It is not only known for its tea plantations, but also as one of the most flood-affected regions on Earth.

The key question: Why does an annual natural phenomenon spell such disaster for people’s lives and livelihoods, and how can we solve this?

Preliminary Research

Collaboration for a first case study started with Dr Diganta Barman, the man behind the FLood Early Warning System (FLEWS) - an ingenious system that predicts floods and generates location-specific alerts, developed since 2009 by the North Eastern Space Applications Centre (NESAC). This was complemented by the work of Dr Jaan Sharma Pathak, who brought insights on the more socio-economic aspects of flooding.

ResearchGate: This white paper presents arguments on both the natural as well as anthropogenic factors behind why the floods in Assam cause such largescale devastation.

It was published during the 73rd International Astronautical Congress in Paris in September 2022, presented during the technical session "Space Assets and Disaster Management".

Two hypotheses

Today's cutting-edge flood early warning systems can be further improved via additional data input and feedback mechanisms.
Developing a technology is not enough; in order to ensure impact, focus should be towards developing in parallel, a community-based system. This is where involving the local artistic and cultural narratives will become vital for the simple reason of gaining the trust of the people.

For example, FLEWS covers all flood-prone districts of Assam and thus plays an important role in government flood management strategies and actions. However, while FLEWS is able to generate flood alerts at the district and revenue circle level with an average actionable lead time of 24 to 48 hours, there is a lot of scope for improving its flood prediction success rate (currently 70-80%), and the dissemination of the alerts (currently it depends on the last-mile administrative structure).

Site survey of displaced communities along the Brahmaputra bank near Mayong
(Credits: Priyanka Rajkakati, Jaan Sharma Pathak, 2022)

The RiVeins solution

Through the RiVeins initiative, a novel community-based flood alert and risk management system is proposed, to be developed and implemented using cutting-edge space technologies... and the arts.

Complementing the existing FLEWS warning, which would alert the community 1-2 days in advance to start preparing for a potential flood event, this community-based system coupled with real-time monitoring thanks to ground sensors, will be capable of issuing highly reliable evacuation alerts within two hours of an incoming flood.

It will further consist of an efficient community-based preparedness structure, which will use an innovative artistic approach in order to address the sociocultural challenges of the rural end-user mentioned above.