Bangladesh is a disaster prone country and it is frequently affected by flood, drought, and tropical cyclones. Bangladesh is likely to be one of the most vulnerable countries of the world in the event of climate change. Despite the susceptibility of Bangladesh to weather and climate extremes, the country’s hydro-meteorological information, early warning and seasonal advisory related information is beyond to reach the farmer. There is an opportunity to provide reliable Agro-Meteorological information to farming community effectively. Agro-Meteorological information for sustainable agricultural development is needed to disseminate information to the farmer in their understandable language to plan their farming activities more efficiently.

WMO had organized a technical seminar in 2012 regarding climate services in Bangladesh. National and foreign expert’s participation in the seminar identified three key areas to develop and disseminate Agro-Meteorological services. They are;

1)Development of Agro-Meteorological observation by joint collaboration of meteorologist and agriculturist, providing medium and long term seasonal forecast and advisories, development of  Agro-Meteorological forecast and climate services.

2) Development of timely and rapid dissemination mechanism to deliver reliable Agro-Meteorological services.

3) Capacity building of all stakeholders to use Agro-Meteorological information by training and developing a feedback mechanism from the end users.

According to the suggestion of WMO and with the financial support of The World Bank, “Bangladesh Weather and Climate Services Regional Project (BWCSRP)” was approved by the Government of Bangladesh in February 2017. Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) and Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) will jointly implement the project. Now Three organizations are implementing the project by three separate DPPs.

 

Department of Agriculture Extension under the Ministry of Agriculture is implementing “Agro-Meteorological Information Systems Development Project (Component -C of BWCSRP).

Project Duration: July 2016 to June 2021

 

Objectives of the project:

 

Overall Objective:

Overall objective of this project is “to strengthen the capacity of the Government of Bangladesh to deliver reliable weather, water and climate information services and improve access to such services by priority sectors and communities”.

Specific objectives of the Project are:

-To disseminate Agro-Meteorological services to farmers in order to increase agricultural productivity and assist farmers in coping with weather and climate extremes.

-To provide support to establish a science-based Agro-Meteorological information system to develop appropriate information and products.

-To deliver Agro-Meteorological information through a number of dissemination mechanisms that will provide the agricultural sector with a decision support information system to mitigate climate-related agricultural production risks.

-Strengthening of capacity at different levels to enable the development and effective delivery of climate information services to the agricultural sector.

Activities:

Sub-Component C.1: Establishment of the Bangladesh Agro-Meteorological Information System (BAMIS)

A. Setting up a Comprehensive web-portal for BAMIS at DAE

- Improved Agro-Meteorological services to farmers.

- Development of suitable backup system and archiving of information.

B. Development of BAMIS infrastructure

-Necessary hardware, software, and other technological components to create and maintain an effective and sustainable BAMIS.

C. Development of upazila level Agromet databases

- Digitization of historical and current agricultural data on the land holdings crops/cropping systems cultivated by farmers, average crop yields in different upazillas.

- Integration of AWS (Automated Weather Station) weather and agricultural data and compilation of Agro-Meteorological databases for 487 upazillas.