A comprehensive study on vulnerability of a coastal city like Visakhapatnam to rise in sea level, storm surge, and other climatic changes has been made by The Energy and Resources Institute. A database management system (DBMS) has also been created on climate resilience.

The one-and-a-half-year study, taken up by TERI with the support of USAID’s Climate Change Resilient Development Programme (CCRD) under climate resilient infrastructure services component, has created a database that could be used by the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation.

The focus is to understand how changes will affect infrastructure — transport, water supply, solid waste management, telecom, power supply, tourism, and industry — and its services, says Divya Sharma, Project Investigator and Fellow, Sustainable Habitat Division of TERI.

The TERI team has analysed the existing infrastructure and services, and the data available on it. It then has converted it into a database management system (DBMS). The DBMS, with data fields that are key to resilience planning of a city, has been handed over to the GVMC for further use.

The DBMS would help the GVMC plan a more resilient infrastructure as part of its reconstruction exercise post Hudhud.

Right now, the city is not collecting that kind of a data, she points out.

As part of the study, consultations have been held with stakeholders in the city and views of experts from the National Institute of Oceanography in the city and in Panjim have been included.

In its climate analysis, rainfall pattern, observed and projected sea level rise, pattern of cyclone events have been considered and corroborated with digital elevation models to identify vulnerable hotspots in the city.

The study has prepared maps on land use and land cover and identified the areas vulnerable to storm surge, sea level rise, and extreme rainfall. The study has also identified the sensitive areas. It has given recommendations on how these sectors can be planned for resilience for existing infrastructure, on retrofit for longer life and climate proofing and on new infrastructure, says Ms. Sharma.

Way ahead

The GVMC has to bring the entire data on to the DBMS so that it supports resilience planning efforts.

Data can be added and updated from time to time, and it can be made dynamic by changing it into web-based database, says Ms. Divya Sharma.

The GVMC has to incorporate the recommendations made in its development planning process into the new DPRs they are preparing and commence using the DBMS. Unless they do it, the work will not be fruitful.

On the time frame, Ms. Divya Sharma says some measures should be in the short term and some in the medium term.

For instance, changes in the land use plan can come only in the next master plan.

The Municipal Commissioner told the officials that vulnerable hotspots should be included in the master plan as early as possible.

A separate team has been constituted in TERI to make an assessment of how Hudhud impacted the city.