After Cyclone Hudhud pounded India’s southern port city of Visakhapatnam last October, snapping bridges, swamping farmland and wrecking fishing boats, many breathed a sigh of relief.
The lives of tens of thousands of residents had been spared as a result of a well-rehearsed mass evacuation to shelters – a lesson learned from long experience with floods, sea surges and strong winds from storms whipped up in the Bay of Bengal.
But as the city of 2 million people, commonly known as Vizag, gears up to become one of India’s first “smart cities”, officials admit much more must be done to help it cope with increasingly extreme weather – a challenge being recognised in many fast-growing metropolises worldwide.
“It is important for a city like Visakhapatnam to become climate-resilient,” said district administrative chief N. Yuvaraj, adding that local authorities and the Andhra Pradesh state government are working with a range of agencies to make that happen.
In the coming months, other cities across India will compete to join an ambitious $1.2 billion plan launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to improve quality of life in the country’s rapidly expanding urban areas.
The “smart cities” effort, in 100 cities across India, aims to create urban spaces where green, high-tech initiatives bring more efficient management of resources, including water and energy, and better services to citizens.
Public transport run on clean energy, solar-powered street lights and green buildings are important low-carbon concepts for these cities. But to be really intelligent, cities must also consider the impacts of climate change, government officials say.
“When we start talking about the management of cities, disaster risk reduction is one of the key aspects we speak about,” said Jagan Shah, director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs.
“(Smart) cities will have to revisit their disaster management plans because there is a tendency for the older plans to be reports which don’t really translate into action, as we have seen in some disasters,” he said.
Cities are unlikely to be selected for the scheme without a climate resilience strategy, he added.