Chennai

The Tamil Nadu government has commissioned the Integrated Reservoir Management Centre (IRMC) for Chennai, marking a major step towards improving flood preparedness and coordinated water management across the city’s key reservoirs.

The IRMC was inaugurated on January 6 at the Indian Coast Guard campus on Varuna Salai in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister Udayanidhi Stalin, Water Resources Minister Duraimurugan, and Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Minister P K Sekar Babu.

Developed and integrated by Canarys Automations Limited, the centre is powered by an Autonomous Reservoir Decision-Making System (ARDMS) that enables real-time, data-driven management of Chennai’s three major interlinked reservoirs — Poondi, Chembarabakkam and Red Hills (Puzhal).

The system integrates flood early-warning mechanisms, SCADA-controlled gate operations, IoT-based field sensors and AI-ML-driven decision support tools. It is designed to operate on the “3R” principle of reservoir management — Retention, Regulation and Release — allowing authorities to manage water storage and discharge more effectively.

Officials said the platform enables continuous monitoring of rainfall patterns, inflows, storage levels, gate positions, downstream river conditions and tidal data, helping generate early warnings and safe discharge recommendations. This allows authorities to anticipate flood risks in advance, regulate releases in a controlled manner, protect downstream communities and optimise water storage during dry periods.

Canarys Automations said the commissioning of the IRMC marks a shift from manual and reactive dam operations to a proactive and climate-resilient water management framework. Reservoir operations will now be centrally coordinated from the IRMC in Chennai.

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Designed to be scalable, the system can be extended to other dams and reservoirs across Tamil Nadu. The initiative builds on similar technology-led flood management efforts implemented in other cities and is aimed at strengthening long-term urban flood resilience and water security.