The 2019 cyclonic storm ‘Fani’ was one of the severest cyclones, in the past two decades, to hit the Bay of Bengal, affecting around 100 million people in South Asia. The cyclone travelled from India's Andaman Islands to Mount Everest in Nepal. Among the countries impacted along its way, India and Bangladesh faced the most extreme damages. A similar cyclone, the Odisha cyclone that occurred in 1999, caused more than 10,000 deaths in these two countries. However, in 2019, the death toll was contained to 81 people due to early warning systems, detection, robust disaster preparedness and response systems, and accurate forecasts.
On April 26th, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) was able to pick up signals of ‘Fani’ as a tropical depression, seven days before its landfall in Odisha. Throughout the lifecycle of the cyclone, meteorologists used imagery from ISRO's SCATSAT-1 satellite to track the location, direction, and intensity of winds close to the ocean surface. Informed by accurate predictions, IMD was able to alert state authorities and district administrations of the cyclone, and provide ground authorities with hourly updates through bulletins, WhatsApp groups, and emails. As a result, India successfully evacuated and sheltered 1,470,197 people. Together with the 1 million population evacuated in Bangladesh, these two South Asian countries accomplished one of the biggest human evacuations in history.
Additional details and more practices like this can be found in Geospatial Practices for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific 2020: A Compendium