NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised the need for the use of advanced technology for disaster risk reduction.
The Prime Minister made the appeal while inaugurating the third two-day session of National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2023, aimed at making the country disaster-resilient by 2030.
“We have to develop models of housing or town planning at the local level. We need to encourage the use of advanced technology in these sectors, which will be a key factor in making them disaster-resilient,” he said.
“We have to be proactive rather than reactive. What was the situation in the country (earlier) for being proactive and what is the situation now? Even after five decades of Independence, there was no law in the country to tackle disasters,” he noted.
After the 2001 earthquake in Kutch, Gujarat was the first state to come up with a disaster management Act, the PM said. On the basis of this Act, the Centre enacted the National Disaster Management Act in 2005, he said, adding subsequently, the National Disaster Management Authority was set up.
The PM said traditional housing and town planning process should be enriched with future technology to better manage disaster planning, and added real-time assessment of resilience of local infrastructure was the need of the hour.