Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Harsh Vardhan today inaugurated the Shillong centre of Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG), a premier central research organisation involved in detailed research on earthquakes in the northeast.
Shillong Geophysical Research Centre (SGRC), which will be one of the regional centres of IIG and the first in the north east, will focus on deciphering all seismic signatures using a variety of observational techniques with the hope that in future earthquakes could be predicted well in advance, sources said.
The setting up of the Centre here assumes significance in view of the frequent tremors occurring in the region with the recent ones in Manipur and Nepal damaging life and property.
Addressing the inaugural function, Vardhan said, "The new mechanism that they (centre) have established will be able to observe a lot of things and more particularly the electrical fuse charges, the variations, temperature and pressure happening at different times, excursions, electron intensity and modulation, very high and very low frequency..."
"All these changes are going to be observed continuously, consistently for years and then relate them to the occurrence of an earthquake. May be with the type of research that they are going to do, in a couple of years we should be able to (forecast earthquakes)," he said.
Noting that the northeast region falls under Zone V in the earthquake map of the world, he said, "I feel this regional centre in the long run is certainly going to help the people of the NE states in a big way."
"With the predictions available, people will be cautious and then you can certainly prevent loss of lives and property unlike the havoc that was caused by earthquakes in recent times in Manipur and neighbouring Nepal," he said.
Lauding his department, Harsh Vardhan said, "Our weather prediction and forecast system, the services we provide to the farmers - they are world class."
He claimed that the rainfall in 2015 was predicted with absolute accuracy.
The country's early tsunami warning system too is world class and information is passed to 80 countries across the coast, he said.
