Building Heat Resilience in India’s Growing Urbanscapes (BHRIGU)

This project adopts a multi-tiered strategy to strengthen urban climate resilience in India by integrating national-scale analytics with targeted, on-ground interventions. It combines geospatial diagnostics, applied research across diverse urbanscapes, and the piloting of scalable adaptation solutions. The project has three important components.

 

1. National-scale diagnostic to establish a comprehensive understanding of heat and related risks across India’s urbanscapes.
2. Deep-dive engagements in six representative urbanscapes during the project’s first phase, leveraging existing government and partner collaborations.
3.  Cross-cutting capacity building to equip stakeholders with tools, knowledge, and frameworks for sustained impact.

 

The project has three main objectives.

 

1. Nationwide Diagnostic: Conduct a geospatial and typological assessment of heat stress and associated hazards (flooding, drought, and extreme precipitation) across Indian urbanscapes. Using a compounding and cascading risk lens, the analysis will identify high-risk clusters based on hazard intensity, exposure, and vulnerability.
2. Phased Interventions: Deploy a climate risk-informed tool and approaches in six representative urbanscapes, selected through the national diagnostic. These will support hotspot identification and enable co-development of context-specific, scalable adaptation pathways with Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and implementation partners.
3. Capacity Building & Dissemination: Strengthen institutional and technical capacities across ULBs, and state and national agencies to embed long-term climate resilience into planning and governance.

 

In line with the three components mentioned above, the project includes the following key activities.

 

National Assessment & Diagnostics

 

1. Conduct literature review, stakeholder mapping, and policy landscape analysis.
2. Develop an urban heat typology and an urban–peri-urban–rural risk framework.
3. Perform national geospatial analysis to map heat and associated climate risks and prioritise cities. Build high-resolution datasets and select six representative urbanscapes.
4. Develop BHRIGU – National Heat Insights Explorer (BHRIGU-NHIE)

City-Level Co-Development & Demonstration

 

1. Co-develop solutions with ULBs through hazard and infrastructure mapping (RS-GIS).
2. Deploy IoT-based monitoring and conduct Urbanscape Vulnerability and Risk Assessments (UVRA).
3. Develop Heat Risk Assessment Tools (HRATs) integrating risk analytics, early warning, and response systems.
4. Demonstrate scalable, low-cost interventions and identify financing pathways.
5. Strengthen cross-sectoral coordination and implement Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) systems with periodic updates.

Capacity Building & Knowledge Dissemination

 

1. Deliver targeted training for government, health, and community stakeholders.
2. Institutionalise tools within ULB and SDMA workflows through co-creation.
3. Enable long-term ownership via partnerships with national agencies and academia.
4. Transfer and embed dashboards within government platforms.
5. Facilitate cross-sectoral collaboration and knowledge dissemination.

Climate Risk Visualization & Access

 

1. Develop open-access BHRIGU–NHIE for multi-hazard risk visualisation. Enable historical analysis across hazard, exposure, and vulnerability layers.
2. Integrate compounding and cascading risk dimensions for decision support.
3. Roll out beta versions for feedback and iterative refinement.
4. Ensure long-term hosting, maintenance, and ecosystem integration.

 

The main outcomes envisioned under this project are provided below.

 

1. Stronger institutions: ULBs, SDMAs, and districts integrate heat risk tools into planning and preparedness, resulting in improved cross-sector coordination.
2. Better data & decision-making: Decision-support systems enable evidence-based action, including national-level policy inputs through BHRIGU-NHIE.
3. Community resilience: Frontline workers, Self Help Groups (SHGs), and vulnerable groups improve preparedness, awareness, and local response.
4. Effective local action: Ground partners drive urbanscape-level interventions and context-specific adaptation measures.
5. Knowledge & uptake: Data supports research, advocacy, and policy use by national agencies, academia, and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
6. Scalable impact: Typology-based, modular approach enables replication and long-term urban heat resilience across cities.

 

To facilitate the project, CSTEP is conducting an organisational mapping exercise of actors engaged in building heat resilience in India. Organisations are being identified using targeted keywords, publicly available reports, and project portfolios. This ongoing exercise serves as an analytical starting point for identifying overlaps and opportunities for collaboration to build heat resilience in India. Visualisations based on the data collated so far are presented in this document.