Analysis of the causes of massive flooding in the Far East should lead to a revision of the legislation in order to declassify topographic information and enable access of volunteers to work in emergency zones. Such an opinion was voiced up by the participants of the round table in the “Parliamentskaya gazeta”, which discussed the situation in the Khabarovsk Territory.
One of the reasons of unpreparedness of the territory to flood is the lack of reliable topographic information available to civil services, experts believe.
“The terrain model is classified and therefore, even knowing the height of the flood, it is impossible to accurately predict how many settlements will be inundated” – shared her view the expert in the field of satellite monitoring Alex Kucheiko.
According to him , climate change, at any time can lead to inundation of a large number of settlements in many regions of the country, but due to the lack of freely available topographic information, it is difficult to assess the extent of real threat. The situation is further complicated by the ill-considered distribution of land for housing construction, and because of that no one today can assess the impact of possible flooding.
Director of the Institute for Ecological Modeling and Studies Vladimir Slobodyan agrees with this expert viewpoint. “The issue of the availability of topographic data has a lot of problems, because the procedure of the exchange of confidential data imposes severe restrictions on the agencies. The declassification of the topographic maps was discussed 5 years ago, but the issue remains open so far”, – said the expert.
According to Vladimir Slobodyan, in this age of rapid development of modern technology and the present state of satellite systems, it all looks pretty strange, and the Defense Ministry should not keep this information locked up.
Another issue that is causing debate in the expert community is associated with the access of volunteers and residents of the affected localities to carry out flood prevention work. Under the current law, civilians cannot stay within the area where the state of emergency is declared, even though people are willing to build water dykes with their own hands.
The experts were supported in this by the Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Agriculture, Food Policy and Environmental Management Constantine Tsybko. In his opinion, legislators should make an exception here, but in making this decision, it should be minded that untrained civilians can become victims of the emergency.
