Melting glaciers in Bhutan are creating thousands of unstable lakes that can burst without warning, and this project will build a low-cost sensor network to detect those floods before they hit villages and dams. Bhutan has more than 2,500 glacial lakes, 65 of them classified as high-risk, but monitoring even the most dangerous ones with standard sensors is prohibitively expensive. The team will test a new approach in the Punatsangchu catchment—the highest-risk valley in the country—by co-developing cheap, rugged sensors that can run on remote power and transmit data in near-real time. They will also run computer models to forecast how a flood would spread, allowing engineers to place early warning systems where they will be most effective. If the system works, it could save lives and protect critical infrastructure. Bhutan’s hydroelectric dams, cultural heritage sites, and major settlements all sit directly downstream of these lakes. Earlier warnings would give people time to evacuate and allow operators to manage dam releases, avoiding catastrophic failures. The approach could then be scaled across the Himalayas and other high-mountain regions facing the same growing threat.
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Himalayan glaciers are a vital water resource for the ~1 billion people living downstream, but these glaciers are melting rapidly as climate warms. Glacier shrinkage causes ice-marginal lakes to grow, which can burst, resulting in potentially highly-destructive Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs). Bhutan is the most vulnerable country globally to GLOFs because its population, infrastructure, cultural heritage and hydro-power generation capacity lie downstream of glacial lakes. Recently, its glacial lakes and downstream infrastructure have grown rapidly, and have generated GLOFs requiring emergency action. Thus there is an urgent need to quantify the rising threat posed by GLOFs across Bhutan, which provides the ideal test site for developing approaches that can used in other high-mountain areas. Bhutan had >2500 glacial lakes in 2020 and 65 were categorised as high-risk. It is therefore prohibitively expensive to monitor even its most dangerous lakes using industry-standard sensors, but this is vital for early warnings, hazard management, and effective data delivery to end-users. Key challenges to this are a lack of: i) low-cost, near-real time sensors for monitoring GLOFs and potential triggers; ii) power generation and data transmission in Bhutan's remote catchments and effective data delivery to decision-makers; and iii) accurate forecasts of GLOF characteristics, which can be used to optimise early warning system (EWS) locations. Our collaborative network with our Project Partners in the Royal Government of Bhutan (RGoB), Druk Holding and Investments (DHI) is uniquely placed to address these challenges, given DHI's world-leading expertise in sensor prototyping and remote-area power and data communications technology and Newcastle University's (NU) research expertise in GLOFs, sudden-onset flooding and low-cost environmental monitoring. Our aim is to develop a new, long-term, international partnership centred on GLOFs and water and energy resources in Bhutan. We will use the Punatsangchu catchment as the test site, as it has the 4th highest GLOF risk globally and the highest in Bhutan. Our objectives are: O1: Co-develop a network of low-cost sensors, verified using industry-standard data, to monitor GLOFs and their potential triggers. O2: Co-design appropriate power supplies and data transmission infrastructure and integrate with existing data networks, delivery interfaces and decision-making pathways. O3: Use ensemble modelling to determine the range of possible realities of GLOF inundation and optimise downstream EWS. Our partnership was founded during an initial scoping meeting in March 2024, from which this proposal was co-developed. The collaboration is fieldwork-centred and will be developed by planning and executing two joint field seasons, which will enable the two-way transfer of skills and knowledge, supported by monthly online team meetings. Workshops bookending the fieldwork will be used to engage and expand stakeholder networks and a workshop in Newcastle will be centred on developing future funding proposals. Longer-term, we aim to: scale up our approach across Bhutan; conduct multi-hazard assessments; and investigate the responses and priorities of exposed populations, with potential funders including NERC, Leverhulme Trust and World Bank. Our work has the potential to deliver high impacts in Bhutan, which will be evidenced by inclusion in policy. Our results will provide earlier and more effective warnings and underpin longer-term emergency and land-use planning. This can save lives and infrastructure and have major economic benefits, by minimising impacts on hydroelectric power. As part of the RGoB, DHI provide the pathway to achieving these impacts, via their close links with key decision makers.
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