Building Climate Informed Decision Support Tools for Fragile Mountain Urbanscapes

This project addresses the urgent need for climate resilience in India’s hill urbanscapes, which face unique vulnerabilities from compounding and cascading climate risks. It aims to co-develop spatially explicit, open-source tools that integrate multi-hazard data, socio-economic vulnerabilities, and adaptation strategies. Focusing on Tier-2, Tier-3, and emerging urban centres across fragile mountain ecosystems, the project will foster a shift from siloed, expert-driven approaches to community-anchored, system-integrated planning , embedded within state institutions. The overarching goal is to enable anticipatory, inclusive, and context-specific climate-sensitive planning through data-driven decision support systems.

 

While climate discussions have largely focused on Tier-1 cities, future urban growth in India is increasingly concentrated in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, as well as emerging urban local bodies, particularly in ecologically fragile hill regions. Hill towns across the Himalaya, Western Ghats, North-East, and Central India are experiencing rapid tourism growth, increasing climate hazards such as floods, landslides, heat stress, and water scarcity, and mounting pressure on infrastructure and public services. However, planning and governance remain fragmented, with limited integration of geospatial risk data and cross-sectoral climate planning.

 

To address these challenges, the project will focus on:

 

1. Biogeographical representation: Pilot the initiative in five to eight representative hill urbanscapes across the Himalaya, Western Ghats, North-East, Central, and Western India, selected based on topography, climate, tourism patterns, urban typology, and vulnerability profiles.
2. Compounding risk-informed planning: Assess interconnected climate risks such as floods, droughts, heat stress, and infrastructure fragility to identify integrated and multi-benefit adaptation interventions.
3. Digital public goods: Develop a climate solutioning platform with GIS-based visualisations, hotspot mapping, scenario modelling, and ward-level vulnerability overlays to support inclusive, data-driven planning.

 

 

The expected outcomes of our initiative, aligned with our impact framework, include peer and government citations of our work, pilot implementation, and, finally, implementation at scale. Specific outcomes include:

 

1. Spatialised climate data and risk typologies will become public goods, accessible to CSOs, academic institutions, and private actors.
2. Compounding risk lens (e.g., heat + water scarcity or floods + infrastructure fragility) embedded into urban planning processes.
3. Five to eight city-specific climate risk dashboards will be developed and adopted by ULBs to inform planning.
4. Institutional capacity enhanced through training.
5. ULBs budget for adaptation interventions based on tool outputs (e.g., nature-based solutions, early warning systems).
6. Community preparedness improved, with measurable reductions in livelihood disruptions and disaster response time.
7. A scalable digital platform will be developed, enabling replication and serving as a plug-and-play tool for adaptation in other hill towns.