BRAHMA-2D : Indigenous River Model
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT Guwahati) recently developed an indigenous river model, BRAHMA-2D.
- BRAHMA-2D (Braided River Aid: Hydro-Morphological Analyzer) is a mathematical model to gauge the flow of large braided rivers like the Brahmaputra.
- It is a quasi-3D river flow model which helps to understand how fast the water moves at different depths inside a river and its circulation around a structure like a spur installed to prevent river bank erosion.
- It can help engineers in the design of sustainable hydraulic structures like spurs, reverent, and other river bank protection measures in order to check river bank erosion.
- It was developed by the researchers at IIT Guwahati in collaboration with the Brahmaputra Board under the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti.
- It was successfully validated on the Brahmaputra River near Majuli Island, the second largest freshwater River Island in the world, in Assam, which is prone to river bank erosion.
- It integrates a two-dimensional model of water movement with a theory about entropy, a measure of disorder or randomness.
- It observes a dip phenomenon near spurs where the flow of water underneath increases, a phenomenon absent at points away from these structures.
- It has also been applied to understand the habitat suitability of aquatic species, especially endangered species, based on the availability of the required depth and flow velocity.
