Climate resilience to foster sustainable development: A case of Bhubaneswar city

Abstract

The world population is expected to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050 according to UN. More than twice as many people will live in cities (6.7 billion) as in rural areas, according to estimates (3.1 billion). Urban systems must be resilient enough to face various challenges to make our cities more and more sustainable. Flooding is one of the world's most experienced natural disasters. India is a climate-vulnerable country that ranks high among countries at danger from climate change. In a growing country like India, urban regions are major investment grounds, accounting for 60% of the country's overall GDP. Any unplanned course of action such as changing the vulnerable land use to build up like flood plains, wetlands would aggravate the exposures during any kind of disaster. Urban areas that are most susceptible to external shocks and stresses are those that have fragile systems as well as large populations of the socially or economically marginalized. Climate change, whose adverse effects threaten all nation’s capacity to achieve sustainable development, is one of the biggest problems of our time, according to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The state has also suffered 31 flood events in 36 years, from 1975 to 2011.Smart city Bhubaneswar is also growing rapidly nearly twice in two decades. The problem is this critical aspect of climate resilience is missed in the master plan which can have further aggravated outcomes soon in a disaster event and to add that Bhubaneswar has been experiencing more frequent urban floods. Flood risk zones were created using analytical spatial modelling in GIS to better understand floods and their repercussions. These zones account for the locations where a flood hazard is predicted to occur and reflect socioeconomic and infrastructural susceptibility. Master plans along with land use land cover has been studied to find out vulnerable areas with appropriate parameters from literature. Both physical and social assessments are overlayed with weightage using AHP technique to produce risk map. The risk map was compared with proposed master plan Bhubaneswar 2030 to create more resilient spatial plan by devise norms and adopting best practices to handle urban systems better during a flooding event. By incorporating disaster risk reduction techniques into the land use plan, the primary objective is to assure urban growth that can coexist with nature