Flood Management in Urban Assam

Transcription

1 September 2018 Flood Management in Urban Assam A policy note for practitioners 01

2 Authors: Divya Sharma, Rizwan Uz Zaman, Shashikant Chopde, Ajay Katuri, Vinaya Padmanabhan, Rashmi Dutta Dey and Partha Thakuria ACT (Action on Climate Today) is an initiative funded with UK aid from the UK government and managed by Oxford Policy Management. ACT brings together two UK Department for International Development programmes: the Climate Proofing Growth and Development (CPGD) programme and the Climate Change Innovation Programme (CCIP). The views expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect the UK government s official policies Cover image courtesy: Pradip Nemane Inside images: ACT

3 Contents Abbreviations and acronyms ii The problem of urban flooding 1 ACT s work on climate resilience in Assam 1 The four cities: a snapshot 2 Factors contributing to flooding 3 Structural issues 3 Planning and implementation 4 Institutional challenges 4 Learnings from four cities 5 Structural measures 5 Planning and policy 7 Forecasting and warning 7 Capacity Building 8 Key Takeaways 9 1

4 Abbreviations ACT ASDMA CCIP CPGD DDMA DFID FLEWS HRVA PPCP SOP UN Action on Climate Today Assam State Disaster Management Authority Climate Change Innovation Programme Climate Proofing Growth and Development District Disaster Management Authority Department for International Development Flood Forecasting and Early Warning System Hazards Risk and Vulnerability Assessments Public Private Community Partnership Standard Operating Procedures United Nations 2

5 The problem of urban flooding Flooding in urban areas is a particularly challenging problem. India is one of the world s most flood-prone countries with 113 million people exposed to floods 1. According to the UN report India s average annual economic loss due to disasters is estimated to be $9.8 billion, out of which more than $7 billion can be attributed to floods 2. Climate change is going to exacerbate these events and their frequency while also exhibiting deviations in seasonal weather patterns. Most Indian cities have failed to offer long-term solutions for disaster safety and climate resilience. Flooding and other climate impacts will further challenge urban decision makers in their capacity to create more liveable and resilient cities. India is one of the world s most flood-prone countries with 113 million people exposed to floods Figure 1: Chennai floods, December 2015 Source: Vinaya Padmanabhan ACT s work on climate resilience in Assam ACT (Action on Climate Today) is working to reduce the effects of climate change in South Asia. The initiative is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and managed by Oxford Policy Management. It brings together two existing DFID programmes: the Climate Proofing Growth and Development (CPGD) programme, and the 1 The Global Assessment Report (GAR) on disaster risks, 2015, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk reduction (UNSDR). 2 Ibid. 3

6 Climate Change Innovation Programme (CCIP). ACT operates in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and India and works with governments to integrate climate change into policies, plans and budgets and is contributing to these countries capacity to attract and leverage climate change investment. In Assam, India, the issue of urban flooding and riverbank erosion are identified as a priority focus area for ACT. The Assam City Flood Management Project began in August 2016 and is implemented in partnership with Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA), District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) and city governments. This project assisted four cities along the Brahmaputra - Dibrugarh, Majuli 3, Silchar and Jorhat -- develop action plans for climate resilient flood management. Understanding flood risks in cities and identifying mechanisms to address them required a comprehensive multi-disciplinary approach. ACT conducted two main activities: (a) quantitative hazard risk vulnerability assessment (HRVA) studies of each city, to assess and map flood risks and vulnerable areas, and (b) qualitative assessments to understand how government departments currently address these risks, and how these risks impact communities. The four cities: A snapshot Box 1: The four cities An overlay of flood inundation maps and the urban areas revealed that three urban areas - Dibrugarh and Jorhat fall very close to Brahmaputra, and Silchar in proximity to Barak, have a large population living in the low lying areas. Along with these 3 cities, Majuli was included since it is the largest riverine island and a newly formed district in the state. Source: Ajay Katuri 3 Majuli was declared a Town Panchayat in

7 Figure 2: Summary table Demographics Dibrugarh Jorhat Silchar Majuli Population of 1,45,488 people in city and outgrowths 4 Population of 1,27,000 people 5 in city and outgrowths Population of 1,72,820 people 6 in city and outgrowths Largest river island Unique culture and history Recent flooding Assam Tibet earthquake in 1950 changed the geography of the area There have been major floods in 1966, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1978, 1984 and more recently in 2002 and In 2016, the Bhogdoi breached an embankment kilometers from Jorhat town, causing floods that rendered hundreds homeless. 8 Faces flash flooding and landslides often, most recently in villages submerged in Main problems Inadequate capacity of DTP drain Slope of district and height of river bank Solid waste management Unscientific drains and culverts Lack of inter departmental coordination Lack of skilled staff No SWM system overfilled Faces water logging and riverine flooding Improper gradient and missing links of drains Solid waste management Bounded by rivers Several breaches in embankments Nascent city administration Factors contributing to flooding Heavy rainfall and floods are likely to increase in frequency and intensity due to climate change. Poor planning and implementation and institutional bottlenecks within city governments will exacerbate these impacts. Some of these important issues are discussed here. 4,5,6,7,8,9,10 India s average annual economic loss due to disasters is estimated to be $9.8 billion 4 Census 2011 website. Nd. Accessed at: [Accessed 06 May 2017] Baruah, D Urban History of India: A Case Study. Mittal publications

8 Structural issues Inadequate flood resilient infrastructure: All the four cities have inadequate drainage infrastructure. Drains are planned and constructed without considering the gradient of the land, or connections with other feeder drains. Existing drains are not maintained or cleaned. Box 2: Notes from the field, Jorhat An urban planner mentioned that drainage projects may be perfect, but implementation is riddled with problems. The masons do whatever they want, he said. He cited an example where a 30-foot road will look like a line on the map or a plan. We don t know where anything starts on a map! During execution, everything goes wrong. You can do as many studies as you want but it needs to coincide with the field and the ground reality. Practically all projects fail, he said. Poor maintenance facilities of roads where the roads layering is conducted without proper engineering methods, the road level tends to increase with time and leads to inundation and household flooding Box 3: Notes from the field: Silchar, Surat and Gorakhpur One respondent from Silchar said, over the years, the road levels have been raised higher than the plinth level of the houses. Houses with lower plinth levels were submerged with 1ft water, during heavy for last 3 years. Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and Surat in Gujarat are good counter examples. In Gorakhpur, people have started building higher plinths. In Surat, people started building more stories to their houses and changed the internal planning of their houses to keep ground floor free, saving their property during floods Planning and implementation Solid waste management: None of the cities have a streamlined system for solid waste management. Most waste is dumped into beels (water bodies) or drains, leading to water logging and flooding. Poor land-use planning: In all the four cities, there is inadequate land use planning, and guidelines on building regulations are not adhered to. Of the four cities, only Jorhat has a Master Plan, however, the plan is now outdated. There have been large-scale encroachments on beels, hills and other important natural resources. Preferences for construction materials are also changing: while communities have Figure 4: Water logging caused due to dumping of waste Source: Vinaya Padmanabhan 6

9 traditionally used bamboo as construction material and constructed on stilts, they are switching over to Reinforced cement concrete (RCC) construction that are not suited to the geography and hence effected by floods while also causing water logging during floods. Institutional challenges Institutions are important as they shape the capacity of agents such as individuals, to access and maintain systems (infrastructure and ecosystems), particularly during a disaster. Some of the major institutional issues and their implications are summarized in the diagram below: Little to no data on spatial variation on risk; Data held by different departments Data collection No clear guidelines No guidelines incorporation vulnerability concerns (for instance on how to raise the road without raising the level) Lack of integration on Climate and DRR in urban development Climate change and DRR Institutional challenges Weak institutional and community capacity Weak capacity, inadequate finances and manpower; weak capacity of community groups in responding to disasters Figure 5: Institutional challenges Learnings from four cities Cities need to urgently address these structural, planning and implementation related and capacity constraints. Some recommendations from the city specific actions plans are listed below. While these recommendations are based on the study of four cities, many have wider applicability to other Indian cities. Structural measures One factor that makes cities vulnerable to floods is a weak infrastructure base and an almost negligible solid waste management system. There is a lack of awareness and technical know-how on understanding and integrating climate change and its impacts on city systems. At the city level, flood preparedness is in the form of early warning systems and rescue and relief preparedness. For instance, the absence of drainage systems in the four study cities, was a prominent issue. Cities must address problems with aging infrastructure and maintenance of existing infrastructure. over the years, the road levels have been raised higher than the plinth level of the houses 7

10 They must also integrate resilience concerns into the design of new infrastructure. Some recommendations based on the study of four cities are as follows: Construction of reservoirs to contain floodwater, building flood protection walls and flood by-pass channels and improving upon the design for irrigation and flood protective structures. Strengthening of dams and canals, and integrating them with city level storm water drainage network Strengthening/repair of existing roads and bridges and other critical infrastructure in flood plain are also critical. Identifying locations suitable for holding water in the lean periods to enable regulation of environmental flows. Repair and re-layering roads without raising their level and re-modelling cross-drainage works in all critical roads in towns. Box 4: Development of a catchment area Developing a catchment area is one of the critical areas of intervention for flood management. Some recommendations under this include: Managing sedimentation: Sedimentation happens all along the banks of the Brahmaputra. Conducting the sedimentation analysis will enable the departments in safeguarding the river lining and bunds. Some recommendations towards this include (i) estimating the amount of silt in the river through a comprehensive study, (ii) Studying the feasibility of removing silt from some areas and (iii) constructing and maintaining structures to managing desired sedimentation Afforestation: The development of the catchment area through afforestation can be conducted by (i) Conducting land use land cover change detection studies (ii) Identifying areas where large scale deforestation has taken place and (iii) Identifying specific plant/ tree species to arrest the soil erosion and improving the water percolation Upper catchment terrain management: Upper catchment terrain management-one way of reducing the storm water coming into these towns is to improve the holding capacity of the soil upstream. By using forestation and other soil conservation techniques, the permeability of the soil can be positively modified and can help reduce downstream the flood threat. Creating a suitable drainage network: Constructing small reservoirs, check dams and ponds to route the flood water would involve (i) identifying suitable areas for storing access runoff, (ii) conducting feasibility of rainwater storage at household level and providing incentives for harvesting the rainwater at initial level, (iii) creating suitable drainage network and infrastructure to divert the flood water to these designated areas and (iv) explore the possibilities of using the stored flood water for irrigation and other uses instead of depending on river water Planning and policy While the experience from the project cities points out towards need of hard infrastructure to deal with river flooding but a lot of problems related to flash floods and inundation can be addressed by considering planning and implementation issues. Some recommendations include: Integrating flood management with the urban development planning is very important. For example, drainage master plans can help inform various construction and infrastructure development work, ensuring that they are climate resilient, and located 8

11 ...drainage master plans can help inform various construction and infrastructure development work, ensuring that they are climate resilient, and located in low risk areas. Figure 6: Sedimentation of the Brahmaputra near Dibrugarh in low risk areas. Traditionally, these plans have had limited jurisdictions, and did not address all the natural catchment areas. This leads to degraded ecosystems as well as increase in the incidences of flash floods, since a lot of water flows within the city and there are no outlet or buffers to soak it for days together. Drainage master plans need to be integrated with city development plans, transport plan, solid waste management plans A holistic awareness drive for the community is needed to encourage them to adopt safe and sustainable practices. As discussed, dumping garbage, especially polythene into drains has choked these drains, preventing them from draining water. Conducting the technical studies to identify the areas suitable for development activities and areas suitable for conservation activities within the town s jurisdiction Review of existing byelaws dealing with the allocation of land for development and reviewing the process of issuing building permissions can assist in reducing the risk, increasing the utilisation of land, conserving sensitive zones of the town, and identifying locations of safe infrastructure. Enactment and enforcing laws related to development in restricted areas (like flood plains) can reduce the potential damages and losses. 9

12 Box 5: SWM in Silchar The city of Silchar, went for the decentralized public private community partnership (PPCP) Solid waste management model at ward level. A pre-feasibility study for other cities to this end will enable in understanding the market potential of such an intervention. Forecasting and warning Strengthening and upgradation of existing flood forecasting system and reviving the nonfunctional weather stations in cities is also necessary. Currently the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has a system of disseminating the early warning information to the district collectors. Instead of this top down approach, the cities should be able to access this information, passing it on to relevant departments. Cities should: Install and calibrate Automatic Weather Stations within the catchment areas of the river(s) and tributaries Installing a Doppler radar in the state that can help in identifying the weather systems well in advance and rolling out preparedness measures Provide the data collected from the weather stations to be synchronised and analysed at the meteorological department and made available to all the departmental heads in the state and the city. 11 Box 6: FLEWS project 11 The flood forecasting and warning system (FLEWS) developed by ASDMA is a system by which flood induced hazards can be minimized and prevented. The project s success in its initial pilot led to scaling up of the same in 14 districts in Assam. The system is built out of three major components the meteorological component, the hydrological component and post flood identification of embankment breaches and general monitoring of embankments. 11 More information on the project can be found at: 10

13 Capacity Building There is a strong need to build capacity within urban local bodies to plan and implement resilience measures in urban development activities. From the study, it was found that departments do not have or adhere to flood contingency plans and standard operating procedures and guidelines (SoPS). Each department should be trained and mandated to prepare their own Departmental Flood Contingency Plan and SoPs so they are more selfsufficient. Sufficient financial resources need to be allocated towards this. Build capacity of the officials at district/town level to collect, analyse and disseminate the flood forecast information and establish a command and hierarchy system to collection, analysing and dissemination of the flood early warning system. Simple gadgets like wireless sets, walkie-talkies, tablet computers, are needed by these ULBs to be better equipped for information exchange during critical hours. Key personnel should be identified in each department as an owner of disaster management activities Refreshers courses from time to time for these officials will keep them updated on procedures and information. While training for the officials at urban local body level will help decentralise some of the key interventions for flood management, it is also necessary to build capacity of the local community on flood rescue mechanisms. Organizing mock drills on flood rescue, training people in making of rafts, makeshift boats with available materials, basic training on CPR and first aid would help decrease the number of causalities due to delayed rescue operations. Capturing the most vulnerable communities for these training programs such as capacity building of slum residents on disaster response and resilient livelihoods, will be critical. 11

14 Key takeaways There is very little knowledge about climate impacts and resilience interventions to address the flooding problems. Urgent need for city administrations to include water resource management, flood management and the prevention of riverbank erosion in their urban planning processes in the wake of past disasters and future climate change. Identification of the natural drains and putting them on the maps of the city and integrating them in the current master plan is an absolute necessity. Build capacity of the officials at district/town level to collect, analyse and disseminate the flood forecast information and establish a command and hierarchy system to collection, analysing and dissemination of the flood early warning system. Simple gadgets like wireless sets, walkie-talkies, tablet computers, are needed by these ULBs to be better equipped for information exchange during critical hours. Key personnel should be identified in each department as an owner of disaster management activities. All construction work should have a monitoring committee that checks compliance and quality. 12

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16 E: W: actiononclimate.today ACT (Action on Climate Today) is an initiative funded with UK aid from the UK government and managed by Oxford Policy Management. ACT brings together two UK Department for International Development programmes: the Climate Proofing Growth and Development (CPGD) programme and the Climate Change Innova tion Programme (CCIP). The views expressed in this leaflet do not necessarily reflect the UK government s official policies.