The coastal regions of India and Odisha, in particular, are highly vulnerable to the wrath of weather extremes such as tropical cyclones, storm surges, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, extreme rainfall, and heatwaves in addition to coastal pollution. Establishment of ICON would provide useful insights into various aspects of nature and climate, thus enabling the application of our existing knowledge in a more meaningful way to mitigate natural hazards, explore and sustain ocean resources and understand climate change dynamics so as to adopt policies for spearheading efforts for disaster mitigation and resilience to the complex challenges of the present and future in Odisha and neighboring states.
In view of the same, SEOCS, IIT Bhubaneswar submitted a proposal to establish ICON or Bay of Bengal Coastal Observatory as a national facility to Minsitry of Earth Sciences and got sanction of the same. Prof Raja Kumar took special interest in pursuing the matter with Government of Odisha and the government allotted 40 acres of land at Laudigaun village near Gopalpur seacoast to establish the same, recognizing its significance and encouraging the Science & Technology efforts of IIT Bhubaneswar. ICON is envisaged as a globally unique facility and first of its kind in India capable of observing the land, atmosphere, and ocean synergistically from a highly sophisticated state-of-the-art instrumented observatory right at the coast.
It was decided to create a building comprising of a lab to house the experimental instrumentation besides others, installation of a 50 m tower, few antenna systems and communication facilities to study air/land/sea interaction processes associated with high impact natural hazards of Bay of Bengal. The SEOCS was working on procuring equipment like current profiler from the funds of the project.
The land got registered, the building plan and proposal was approved by the BoG of IIT Bhubaneswar, Rs 2-5 crore was sanctioned by the BoG for construction of the lab and CPWD consented to do the infrastructure development, by the time Prof Raja Kumar relinquished his office at IIT Bhubaneswar. Prof Kumar requested Govt of Odisha to ear-mark the sea-facing buffer land adjacent on the east side to the sanctioned 40 acres of land (sand dunes) is reserved for IIT BBS to cater to the additional space needed in near future.
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