Assessment of Urban Flood Resilience for Water, Sanitation and Storm Water Drainage Sectors in Two Cities of India

Abstract

The study appraised infrastructure, institutional, and financial gaps in two cities in different geo-climatic zones for water, sanitation, and storm water drainage (WSS) sectors. Both study cities have similar topographical conditions like bowl shape surrounded by hills. Storm water runoff with high velocity from steep hills results in urban flooding and impose threats to infrastructure like intake points, treatment plants, and distribution systems. There is no single institution responsible to respond to urban flooding in terms of planning and designing resilient infrastructure, to co-ordinate between agencies during urban floods, to assess damage to critical infrastructure, and importantly to document it. Risk profiling and vulnerability assessment of critical infrastructure needs to be undertaken and suitable adaptation measures are required, which are cost effective, hybrid and redundant in nature, and are essential parts of planning and designing new infrastructure and retrofitting existing.

There are multiple attempts to assess vulnerability and resilience of Indian cities; however, none of these studies looked into the cost of building resilient cities. This research study was designed to estimate approximate financial cost of urban resilience for WSS sectors and their resilience towards urban floods. The study indicates that cities resort to costly engineering solutions to reduce water logging and lack integrated planning approach. It emphasise that unless infrastructure, institutions, and finances are strengthened, Indian cities would not become flood resilient. Adapting to green infrastructure, doing conservation of wetlands and local water bodies, capacity building of city managers, and improving own financial resources could make WSS sectors flood resilient.