Impact of Climate Change-Induced Extreme Events on Infrastructures Crucial to Society: Understanding Risk Assessment and ‘Actionable’ Resilient Strategies for the Resource Constrained Smart Metropolitan City of India

The world’s cities are growing rapidly, and by 2030, over 60% of the global population is expected to live in urban areas. As per a report by the Global Commission on Economy and Climate, Indian urban centers will home over 600 million of the country’s population by this time. Due to high concentration of people, the most adverse impacts of climate change-induced extreme events on infrastructures crucial to society and challenges of cascading and compound events will possible be in these areas, according to the World Bank. In this context, it is of the greatest urgency that a city is able to increase ‘actionable’ climate resilience strategies to avoid risks to the society due to climate change-induced extreme events in addressing the challenges of cascading and compound events.

Alluring on the theories of ‘actionable as development’ and in-depth examines of rolling development initiatives in the smart metropolitan city of India, this study explores the factors that promote or hamper ‘actionable’ resilient strategies for extreme events in the urban water cycle for hydroclimatic risks and vulnerabilities in urban systems of cascading and compound events on infrastructures crucial to society, such as health centers, transport infrastructure, sewage, storm water drainage and solid waste management.

The smart city of Patna (population 3 million) is one of the fastest growing cities in India. Based on the primary and secondary data, developmentally oriented project case studies that addresses the city’s most urgent extreme events risks in transportation, sewage, storm water drainage and solid waste management, it recommends a contingent ‘actionable’ resilient strategies approach as most-suited to such resource-constrained environments to the climatic risks in cascading and compound events. Such an approach has the ability to overcome essential local resource constraints, institutional limitations, while increasing the likelihood of adoption of ‘actionable’ resilient strategies oriented projects under the climate extremes in water cycle and risks to the society in addressing the challenge of climate change.

This research work identifies several factors-among them, developing collective partnerships to conduit technical deficits, taming local organizational structures to create internal resources, and constructing political consensus for climate action-as crucial for successful ‘actionable’ resilient strategies for climate change-induced extreme events in the urban water cycle and risks to the society.

Such contingent ‘actionable’ approaches may thereby deliver a blueprint for instant, realistic, and cost-effective feasible applications in similar smart cities in India and in comparable developing regions of the world. It recognizes the key fragile urban systems in the smart city, which are already, impacted by infrastructural, governance, economic, social, cultural and political issues and may be aggravated by climate change-induced extreme events.

This study concludes that the rudimentary measures, which are needed just to address city’s non-climatic risk concerns, are necessary as a stepping-stone to transformative pathways for addressing the uncertainties associated with climate change-induced extreme events for sustainable and resilient development of the resource constrained smart metropolitan city of India.

Keywords: Climate extremes, Crucial infrastructure, Urban water cycle, Hydroclimatic risks and vulnerabilities, Fragile urban systems and Actionable resilient strategies