Shailesh Nayak: Security and Disaster Management

Now Secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Shailesh Nayak helped set up a state-of-the-art Tsunami Warning Centre and interacted with 14 institutes from four different ministries to develop an entire tsunami warning system suited for India. He is a versatile person with a distinguished career and track record at Indian Space Research Organisation and Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services. He was awarded the Indian National Remote Sensing Award for the year 1994 by the Indian Society of Remote Sensing. Among the other firsts to his credit are development of marine GIS for the country, generation of database for coastal zone management and development of techniques and algorithms for identifying various coastal landforms, mangrove plant communities as well as high-tide line and low-tide line. Once fully implemented, it would significantly improve India’s response to natural disasters and calamities.