Framework for model heat action plan for Indian Cities

Latest IPCC report recognises extreme heat as one of the major hazard affecting Indian cities. Heat Action Plan of Ahmadabad city in 2013 was the first attempt by the Indian cities towards heat management. Since then multiple HAPs have been made at various spatial scales, city, district and state. Most of them have copied the Ahmadabad HAP without much concern for the context, spatial or otherwise. Most of the city heat action plans are crisis oriented, stand alone documents with no emphasis on medium term and long term measures and mostly public health playing a lead role. Some of the major challenges of extreme heat management and planning in Indian cities  are -  i. Lack of context specific heat wave definition ; ii. Lack of Threshold definition and its identification; iii. Need for dynamic heat alert systems and action plans; Poor integration of research, policy and practice while formulating the heat action plans;  iv. Non- standardised approach for heat vulnerability mapping; vi. Lack of  monitoring and evaluation of HHAP; vii. Integration gaps of HHAPs with other related plans and policies;  Additionally, the heterogeneity of urban landscape of India in terms of climate, topography, economics, urban morphology, size and scale of the cities throws more challenges and requires the heat action plans to be context specific.  This study tries to identify the major challenges in heat management and planning of cities and provides a template of addressing to some of them. It provides a framework for the development of model heat action plan for Indian cities. It provides a holistic guidance to identify local planning provisions as important mechanism to reduce the impacts of extreme heat. It adopts an integrated approach to equip local government with an array of countermeasures to cope with extreme heat at local level (management and planning).