hyderabad flood 2020 case study

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Mongabay Series: Flood and drought

Hyderabad floods highlight the need for a disaster mitigation and climate resilience plan

• Unusually heavy rains caused flooding in Hyderabad in mid-October, exposing the faults in the urban infrastructure.
• Some experts claim it is a clear case of the impact of climate change causing extreme weather events. Others point out that it is an example of bad planning, encroachment of lakes and poor urban infrastructure and preparedness.
• In addition to disaster management plans, cities like Hyderabad require a certain amount of climate resilience built in.

For residents of Hyderabad city in India, September usually meant caution as the month brought unusually heavy rains. The Great Musi Floods of 1908  that impacted most of Hyderabad was caused by an unprecedented downpour on September 28 that year and each year September has been the time for caution.

This year however, it is October that saw an extreme weather event that will be etched in the memories of the people. Sudden spells of heavy downpour, cloud bursts and flash floods over a week and especially on the intervening night of October 13-14, exposed the fragile and inefficient urban infrastructure of the capital of Telangana.

Some experts claim that it is a clear case of the impact of climate change causing extreme weather events. Others point out that it is an example of bad planning, encroachment of lakes and poor urban infrastructure and preparedness. Hyderabad lost 33 lives, nearly 40,000 families got badly impacted and suffered a property loss of Rs. 6.7 billion (Rs 670 crores) as per official estimates.

Hyderabad of October 2020, Chennai of December 2015 and Mumbai of July 2005 are definite cases of extreme events. They are wake up calls for urban planners to firm up strategies and implement measures to minimise the damages of such events, whose occurrence could only increase in future, say experts.

Annual average fatalities in India due to climate hazards are about 3660, which is the second highest in the world. The vulnerability of southern cities to urban flooding seems higher. Extreme rainfall events occurred in Hyderabad in 2016, 2010 and 2000. Kerala was swamped by floods in 2018 and Chennai battered in 2015.

Hyderabad witnessed a record rainfall in 24 hours

According to a recent study  by the Centre for Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences of the University of Hyderabad (UoH), increasing urbanisation in Telangana and Tamil Nadu is likely to enhance the rainfall during heavy rainfall events by 20- 25%. The study by Karumuri Ashok and Boyaj of UoH was done in collaboration with Ibrahim Hoteit and Hari Prasad Dasari of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia.

The study used Land Use Land Cover (LULC) imagery from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and conducted a dozen simulated, heavy rainfall events over the three southern states. The changes in LULC led to higher surface temperatures and a deeper and moist boundary layer. This in turn caused a relatively higher convective available potential energy and, consequently, heavier rainfall. The precipitation levels during heavy rainfall events have significantly increased from 2000 to 2017. Their findings were reported in the ‘Quarterly Journal of Royal Meteorological Society’ on May 18, 2020.

Incidentally, Hyderabad celebrated its 429th foundation day on October 7-8. Even before the celebrations, subdued due to the pandemic, dark, rain-bearing clouds converged over the city because of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal. Consequently, on October 13-14, the tri-city — Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Cyberabad — an extent of 650 sq km, got battered with an all-time record rainfall of 29.8 cms in 24 hours. The August 2000 downpour was recorded at 24 cm. For the record, the single-day highest rainfall record in the state of Telangana is 35.5 cms in October 1983 in Nizamabad.

According to B. Raja Rao, of India Meteorological Department (IMD), Hyderabad, “The unusually heavy rainfall was due to two reasons. The deep depression in the Bay of Bengal that moved onto the land in Hyderabad. The second was the rain bearing clouds of the withdrawing Southwest monsoon also pouring out.”

People in large parts of Hyderabad woke up to water everywhere and many lives thrown out of gear. Several low lying localities were deluged in the water from rains and overflowing water bodies.

The growth of Hyderabad along a river

Hyderabad was built along the river Musi, one of the tributaries of river Krishna. The city was spread over 55-60 sq km during the 1908 floods. Learning lessons from the natural disaster, the Nizam sought the help of the renowned engineer Sir Mokhshagundem Visweswarayya for long term flood protection. He designed an underground drainage system, two balancing reservoirs, Himayathsagar and Osmansagar and a sewage treatment plant. The Hussainsagar, which links the twin cities too came up around that time

Post Independence, with its multiple advantages, Hyderabad grew rapidly as the home for public sector organisations, emerged as the place for bulk pharmaceutical drugs  and home to many national research institutes as well. Post economic liberalisation in the 1990s, the neo rich, farmer turned industrial entrepreneurs from coastal Andhra Pradesh, shored up city’s land as a huge, desirable asset, propelling a real estate boom. The inflow of foreign direct investment and coming in of global IT majors such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, Infosys and  e-commerce giants such as Amazon, Walmart to IKEA have transformed Hyderabad.

Consequently, in 2020, the sprawling metropolis administered by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is teeming with close to 10 million people. In contrast, the number of water bodies is down to just 190 from over 2500 in 1970. Even this number is contested by environmental groups.

“Both, the ‘elected’ (MPs, MLAs, Corporators etc) and ‘selected’ (bureaucrats, revenue officials, GHMC) are responsible for a situation wherein, instead of the rainwater flowing into the river, it is rushing into homes”, alleged Lubna Sarwat, who championed Save Our Urban Lakes (SOUL), a citizen’s initiative to save the lakes of Hyderabad.

In this rapid urbanisation, greed and lack of perspective growth plans, lands in river beds have been grabbed in the name of religious buildings and scores of colonies and apartment complexes have been built by all influential sections from politicians to real estate developers and law makers to industrial leaders, she alleged.

Need for a disaster management plan

The State Minister for Urban Development and IT, KT Rama Rao, had announced days before the flooding that the TRS Govt had spent Rs 67,500 crores on the development of urban infrastructure to prepare Hyderabad to emerge as a global city since 2015.

The government had firmed up a Musi River Front Project too. Its dreams of realising the expansion of the metropolis through the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA), which extends to 7500 sq kms (size of Goa) call for dramatic and long term reforms in land use, building construction and infrastructure.

“With the Krishna and Godavari river basins too coming into the picture with water supply being brought to Hyderabad from long distances through pipelines, there is an urgent need to have an expert commission to devise land use plans, drainage and sewage systems and disaster mitigation,” said Ananth Mariganti, from the Hyderabad Urban Labs.

“Hyderabad and even Telangana state do not have a disaster management plans. They are not fully utilising the doppler radar, which can give advance and precise warnings. The focus is on disaster response, even while allowing unplanned growth,” said Marri Shashidhar Reddy, former vice chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

A former MLA, Reddy suggests annual desilting of storm drains, utilisation of weather data and an overall Master Plan to make Hyderabad ready to face disasters in the long run. With nearly 50 percent of revenues of the state and huge presence of industry, the economic loss of extreme events can be disastrous, he warned.

There is a need for exploring the concept of climate proofing cities, said V. Srinivasa Chary of the Centre for Urban Governance and Infrastructure Development, Environment & Energy at the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI). In addition to disaster management, cities too require a certain amount of resilience built in. Hyderabad is a fit case to identify ‘hot spots’ for flooding, design materials and systems that will withstand such events.

Banner image: Hyderabad DRF team continuing the rescue operation in a submerged area in Hyderabad. Photo by Special Arrangement.

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Geo-Spatial Analysis of October 2020 Hyderabad Flood

• Conference paper
• First Online: 13 May 2022
• Cite this conference paper

• Vinay Ashok Rangari   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1671-0886 12 ,
• C. M. Bhatt 13 ,
• Ajey Kumar Patel 14 &
• N. V. Umamahesh 14  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering ((LNCE,volume 234))

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Indian cities are exposed to increasing threat of urban flooding due to rapid urbanization and climate change. As a result, life in the affected city comes to a halt with power cuts, roads jammed, houses inundated, accidents and loss of life. A similar event occurred on October 2020 has paused the life in Hyderabad city affecting more than thousands of houses and 19 casualties. To capture the flooding extent and severity of this event, in present study we have employed HEC-RAS 2D simulations for urban catchment of Hyderabad city. The model simulation results are used to generate spatial flooding extent and develop flood risk map based on simulated flooding depth for Hyderabad city. The analysis of results accounts total areal flooding extent as 58% (658 km 2 ) for October 2020 event with 2–3 m deluge depth at some parts of the city. Further the model identifies respectively 47.44%, 38.37% and 13.69% areas falling under low, medium and high potential for risk. Therefore, to manage and reduce the impacts of urban floods it is must to regulate the urbanization identify the suitable places to divert additional storm water. Further, the natural lakes and flow streams need to bring back to its original state so that they can accommodate the excessive flood volumes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank IMD for sharing event rainfall data. We thank Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and M/S Voyants Solutions Private Limited, Hyderabad, for sharing technical data. We also thank National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) for high-resolution dataset to take the study forward. The Landsat satellite images are downloaded from the United States Geological Survey. We also thank HEC-RAS technical team for their valuable suggestions and technical support.

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Vinay Ashok Rangari

Disaster Management Division, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun, 248001, India

C. M. Bhatt

Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Warangal, Hanamkonda, Telangana, 506004, India

Ajey Kumar Patel & N. V. Umamahesh

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Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Anil Kumar Dikshit

Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Balaji Narasimhan

Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, Assam, India

Bimlesh Kumar

Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Warangal, Warangal, Telangana, India

Ajey Kumar Patel

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Rangari, V.A., Bhatt, C.M., Patel, A.K., Umamahesh, N.V. (2022). Geo-Spatial Analysis of October 2020 Hyderabad Flood. In: Dikshit, A.K., Narasimhan, B., Kumar, B., Patel, A.K. (eds) Innovative Trends in Hydrological and Environmental Systems. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 234. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0304-5_3

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A study of extreme rainfall events and urban flooding over Hyderabad, October 2020

• GAURAVENDRA P. SINGH India Meteorological Department, Pune – 411 005, India
• MEDHA KHOLE India Meteorological Department, Pune – 411 005, India
• ARCHANA SHINDE India Meteorological Department, Pune – 411 005, India
• SUNITA BHANDARI India Meteorological Department, Pune – 411 005, India

The present study analyses and describes the evolution of the Mesoscale Convective Complex (MCC) and its atmospheric conditions during Extreme rainfall event in Hyderabad, on 13 th October 2020. This extreme weather event was a mesoscale event embedded in a synoptic-scale system. During the second week of October 2020, a depression formed over the west-central Bay of Bengal (BoB) and travelled north-westwards through peninsular India, causing heavy rains in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states of India on October 13-14. On October 13, many parts of Hyderabad and Cyberabad received more than 300 mm of rain within 24 hrs. Satellite imagery suggests that this mesoscale system constituted a unique set of structured convection those reported in MCC. This MCC has a cloud shield with a continuous low IR temperature of less than - 33 °C over an area of more than 100000 km 2 and a cloud shield with a continuous low IR temperature of less than -54 °C over an area of more than 50000 km 2 over Hyderabad with a life cycle of about 9 hours. This MCC featured multi cellular characteristics, showing that there was significant low-level moisture in its environment, as well as a mix of vigorous updrafts, implying significant rainfall rates over Hyderabad. The synoptic features suggest that with high precipitable water, the long axis of low-level moisture convergence at 0850 hPa and large horizontal vorticity at 0925 hPa were oriented parallel to the system's mean wind flow. In this case, a clusters of thunderstorms arose in the area of moisture convergence which prolonged the duration of extremely heavy rainfall. The high rain rate, relatively sluggish storm motion, and prolonged back-building over the same locations for several hours are likely to blame for the heavy rainfall accumulations that were observed. The hydrological conditions compounded the effects of the torrential rain, resulting in a natural hazard.

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Rapid Assessment of The October 2020 Hyderabad Urban Flood and Risk Analysis Using Geospatial Data

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Overcoming Barriers to Urban Flood Resilience: A Case of Hyderabad, India

Submitted: 27 May 2020 Reviewed: 16 June 2020 Published: 13 July 2020

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.93195

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Cities are increasingly faced with frequent floods disrupting everyday lives. Adapting to flood risks and conserving eco-sensitive sites are central to social ecological resilience. Rapidly expanding cities are found short of mitigating the adverse environmental impacts. For enhancing flood resilience, it is important to understand the interaction of the key stakeholders and its impact on governance and land use in the cities. Land use change in urban space is constantly influenced by negotiations among various interest groups. The urban governance structures are increasingly dominated by neoliberal approaches of profit maximization. Following a heuristic framework for policy analysis of land use change and governance, the present study assesses the barriers in building flood resilient cities. We apply the framework to Hyderabad city of Telangana, India, which has faced the recurring challenge of flooding. Results demonstrate the lack of urgency in implementing disaster management initiatives and contradictions in existing policies. This study points out the redundancy of elected municipal bodies for taking flood resilience measures, due to increasing proliferation of nondemocratic administrative bodies and underlines the need to bridge the gap through agendas cutting across sectors and institutions.

• urbanization
• flood resilience
• policy analysis
• disaster management

Author Information

Vikas sehra *.

• Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Milap Punia

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

Increasingly, cities are faced with various natural hazards. Urban flooding has increased in frequency and caused loss of life and infrastructure all over the world. Rapid urbanization and increased anthropogenic activities have led to haphazard development on eco-sensitive areas. Changing climate scenario has put livelihood of many vulnerable people at risk. Hyderabad has also faced increasing flooding event over the years. While flooding in 2000 was most destructive for the city in recent times, it has also faced the disruptive floods in 2008 and more recently in 2016 and 2017. Urban governance plays a key role in shaping various processes of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and flood resilience. Primarily, flood mitigation measures can be approached as structural and nonstructural measures. Structural measures include flood defense construction, and nonstructural measures include policy changes, flood awareness programs, and so on. Increasingly, the focus has been shifting from structural to nonstructural measures, which have more long-term impact on flood preparedness and mitigation.

For effective nonstructural measures, we need to strengthen our understanding of root causes behind the urban flooding, for which along with technical knowledge of urban growth, we need deeper understanding of urbanization processes and land use changes. Such an endeavor requires deciphering of power relations between various stakeholders. Urban space is laden with constant negotiations and power conflicts. Sociopolitical tensions and socioeconomic conditions of city dwellers are reflected in socionatural changes in land use. Urban environmental change is the result of deliberate efforts of appropriation of resources by the dominant vested interests, which maintain status quo through fragmented role of institutions and agencies [ 1 ]. Hence, governance of socioecological changes cannot be looked in silos but occurs in the highly politicized urban space [ 2 ].

‘The prevalent flood governance strategies rely on hybrid forms of neoliberal governance, where technological risk prevention is linked to programs that promote social resilience and cultural adaptation’ [ 3 ]. Neoliberalism has a powerful influence on current urban governance and development by defining policy formulations, limiting democratic participation, and managing dissent and counter narratives by proclaiming new futuristic visions of the city [ 4 ]. Neoliberalism anchored in supralocal forces of capital accumulation, and there collaborations with state power have managed to engulf cities in market-driven governance regimes.

The neoliberal ideology gives primacy to market forces and motivation to maximize material benefits over the government’s role as a responsible representative of people [ 5 ]. The emerging neoliberal self is driven by individualism and consumerism, which comes in conflict with sustainable development [ 6 ]. In Indian cities, neoliberal policies had most debilitating effects on economically weaker sections such as forced eviction or displacement of slum dwellers for urban mega projects [ 7 ]. The supralocal forces and parastatal agencies behind such mega projects interact with native sociopolitical narratives to produce a complex urban space. Scholars have investigated urban flooding to reveal contradictory nature of neoliberal urban policies such as (see [ 8 ]) the study on storm drainage network in Bangalore to bring the socionature intricacies of flow and fixity of water and storm drains, respectively. Another study on Surat highlighted the overlapping nature of risks in the city [ 9 ].

In context of Hyderabad, there are few studies examining urban flooding. Most studies are technical in nature, which use GIS tools for presenting land use change, vulnerability, and flood prone areas. Theoretical studies analyzing the policy changes and its implementation are scarce. Among policy-oriented studies, some have explored the increasing pollution and vanishing of the water bodies. And others have looked at urbanization processes, broad governance issues at the municipal level, and financing of various government projects in the city. While investigating the urban flooding, the present study is also an attempt to integrate the relevant literature in informing urban flood resilience in Hyderabad.

Following above theoretical framework, the next section elaborates the methodology, Section 3 describes the way urban development activities have contributed to flooding. Section 4 presents an analysis of policy, implementation, and existing barriers. Section 5 discusses the ways to overcome the barriers to urban flood resilience. And final section gives the concluding remarks.

2. Methodology

Unplanned development and growth of the city pose not only the ecological risk but also risks the sustainability of city itself. Policy framing and implementation give a more organized platform for a restrictive and planned process for city growth. It plays an important role in the regulation of land use change, building resilience and mitigation of hazards as urban flooding. Environmental acts, building regulations, and realizing the ground implementation of policy documents have a key role in flood management in the city. Hence, in cities frequently faced with hazards, it becomes essential to critical analyze both the policy framing and its implementation. Therefore, in the present study, various official documents such as government orders, municipal laws, environmental policies, court orders, civil society engagement, and existing research literature are analyzed to understand the present flood vulnerability in Hyderabad ( Figure 1 ). Also, the focus has been to look at policy gaps in two ways. One is the gap in terms of conception of the policy whereby policy documents itself fail to recognize the complexity of the challenges of environmental hazard faced by the city. And second is the gap in policy conception and implementation whereby policy documents may be ideal to follow, but implementation has lag behind in releasing the vision of such policies.

Location of study area.

First, digital elevation model (DEM) of the area under Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) was prepared to have better understanding of the topography of the study area. DEM represents the land surface and helps to visualize the terrain of an area. DEM for Hyderabad city was obtained from Bhuvan Cartosat. It was clipped using mask layer of shape file of the city and processed in QGIS. Second, to analyze the policy and implementation, this study employs heuristic framework of reflexive governance. This framework analyzes in terms of policy, polity, and politics with three levels of governance at macro, meso, and micro. In adapting the framework for the current study, the policy aspect highlights the problem at hand. Polity aspects elaborate on formal instruments and key institutions such as master plans, disaster management acts, and so on. Finally, the political aspects focus on barriers in improved governance and interaction among various stakeholders.

Heuristic framework can be applied to understand the interaction among the key interest groups and its impact on land use change and flood management [ 1 ]. Framework is useful in discerning blind spots and prevailing narratives to address shortcomings in governance. It draws attention to the power relations among various actors influencing the urban change to fulfill particular interests [ 10 ]. The main documents that have referred in the present study at macro level are disaster management act 2005, disaster management policy 2016, role of national disaster management authority (NDMA), and its plans/guidelines. At meso level, role of state disaster management authority (SDMA), Telangana climate change plan, state level urban policies, and urban mega projects have been analyzed. Lastly, at micro level, the main focus was on the master plans, building by laws, municipal governance, and their impact on the city sustainability and flood vulnerability.

3. Results and discussion

3.1 impact of anthropogenic activities on urban floods.

Role of anthropogenic activities that have been responsible for increased flood vulnerability in Hyderabad is discussed in this section. An attempt was made to bring the entire study area into a DEM for better understanding and evaluation ( Figure 2 ). Thus, from the terrain elevation model, it can be observed that the maximum elevation is in the western part, whereas the minimum elevation is seen towards south east of the city. The low lying areas particularly surrounding water bodies as lakes and rivers are not favorable for habitation. And any extension of built up area around these sites must be with some precautionary measures and at best avoided. But most of such areas have already been covered by dense population. As per the census, population of Hyderabad increased rapidly from 3.05 million in 1991 to 3.64 million in 2001. And after creation of GHMC in 2007, it reached to 6.81 million on 2011. Most vulnerable to urban flooding is the population with minimum socioeconomic resources to cope with disasters. As per the last census 2011, there were 2.29 million people residing in slum and squatter settlements in Hyderabad. As per GHMC’s own estimation, there are 13,509 families directly vulnerable to flooding in the city.

Digital elevation model of Hyderabad.

The maximum mean monthly rainfall in last decade has been recorded 544 mm in August 2000. The lowest rainfall is mostly in the months from December to March. Highest average rainfall for 100 years (1908–2008) in Hyderabad is observed in the month of July (192 mm) followed closely by August (182 mm) and September (180 mm), that is, during southwest monsoon. In August 2000, Hyderabad recorded a rainfall of 240 mm in a day, consequent flooding affected 35,693 homes and 26 people lost their lives along with estimated property loss of Rs. 13.5 million. In August 2008, 237 mm rainfall in 36 hours resulted in property loss of Rs. 4.9 million [ 11 ]. But even small rainfall presents the challenges in the city such as with just 50–60 mm rainfall in July 2005, transport came to standstill, and there were deaths from being swept into the manholes. In recent flooding in 2016 and 2017, there were many reports of death due to collapse of walls, roofs, and buildings after rainfall. In some localities, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has to be called in for rescue and relief operations.

Concretization cover has increased rapidly over the year’s throughput the city. Total build up was 17,092 ha in 1964, which increased to 26,312 ha in 1974 and 45,550 ha in 1990. Area under the river/streams changed from 762 ha in 1964 to 512 ha in 1974 and further to 312 ha in 1990 [ 12 ]. It is the low-density area that has continuously contributed to high-density urban area growth in the city. Total urban built up area of low- and high-density area has grown by 43,607 ha between 1989 and 2011 [ 13 ]. Total built up area in 2015 for Hyderabad urban agglomeration increased to 86,535 ha.

Water bodies have been worst affected by such rapid haphazard urbanization. Construction activities on lake and river bed have pushed more people toward high vulnerability to floods. Water bodies in the area are reduced from 2.28 to 1.64% from 2001 to 2016 [ 14 ]. Area under water bodies reduced from 5949.28 ha in 2001 to 4764.73 ha in 2015, that is, area of 84.61 ha/year of water bodies has vanished [ 15 ]. The expansion in peri-urban has also been at the cost of vanishing water bodies. Urban sprawl has consumed water bodies and open lands to accommodate housing and other economic activities. Even the floodwaters carrying channels connecting one water body to the other have been encroached by private, government agencies, and their coalitions [ 16 ].

Pollution and waste disposal have further aggravated the flood vulnerability by clogging the drainage system and degrading the water bodies with toxic industrial chemical waste. The black-colored sewage of untreated toxic effluents from many industries is discharged into Hussain Sagar Lake through Kukatpally nala [ 17 ]. Further during Ganesh festival, many idols made of plaster of Paris (PoP), iron, and other chemicals are immersed in Hussain Sagar Lake. After dissolving, these idols not only alter the water quality but also accumulate in the lake bed causing serious damage to the lake [ 15 ]. Solid waste disposal is another concern as unsorted waste ends up in the water bodies, which clogs the drainage system and results in flooding of nearby areas. The uncontrolled disposal of solid waste will also worsen the condition with increasing pace of urbanization. The projected per capita solid waste generation by 2021 in GHMC is likely to be 803 g/cap/day [ 18 ].

Peri-urban expansion in the city has even affected the agriculture land. Open cultivated lands act as sponge for excess water during heavy rainfall, but with increasing concretization, agriculture land use has reduced in Hyderabad over the years. In the city’s periphery, in Medak, of 66,055 ha that has been put to nonagricultural use, nearly half have been consumed by the real estate [ 19 ]. The Rangareddy area has witnessed such conversion even at more rapid pace. Development projects such as SEZs, outer ring road (ORR), and IT parks have come at the cost of decreasing open and farm land.

Forest areas are essential for maintaining environmental sustainability in the city and help to absorb/slow down excessive runoff water. According to EPTRI [ 15 ] report, area under scrub and forest land has decreased from 8189.51 ha in 2003 to 8177.75 ha in 2014. Area under parks and recreational playground has increased from 21.68 ha in 2003 to 50.92 ha in 2014, and urban vegetation has increased from 11.31 ha in 2003 to 27.73 ha in 2014. This can be misleading as many parks and urban vegetation have come up on the lake beds to attract tourism and recreational activities. As often lakes are encroached, dried up, and converted into parks such as Chacha Nehru Park came up on site of Masab Tank, similar is the case for Yousufguda cheruvu.

Hyderabad has even been affected by legal and illegal mining in the city, which has degraded land. Other than sand mining, there is active mining of feldspar, limestone, and granite in the city and its periphery. Most of the laterite and granite mines are in the Rangareddy district. High Court issued guidelines under which the mines were not allowed to function inside the ORR, and court observed that such mining in the city is threat to residential colonies and environment. Deccan chronicle has reported frequent mining explosions in Manikonda, Puppalaguda, and Vattinagulapally localities in complete disregard of the norms [ 20 ]. Such land use pattern will only add to the woes of flood vulnerability in the city.

The multiple processes of land use for economic growth have severely degraded and concretized the land in the city. This has resulted in increased flow of water even after moderate amount of rainfall. Disappearance of water bodies has reduced the aquifers and capacity of land to act as absorbent for rain water. In the next section, the policies and acts have been analyzed to understand the process that leads to such dismal conditions in the city.

3.2 Policy gaps and flood risks

Following the heuristic framework of reflexive governance, analysis is organized in terms of policy, polity, and politics with three levels of governance at macro, meso, and micro ( Table 1 ).

Policy analysis framework.

Article 51A (g) of the Indian constitution states that “it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures.” But over the years, these natural endowments have been degraded, at much accelerated rate in the cities. For realizing the spirit of Article 51A (g) at grass root level, it was essential to empower the local bodies. Seventy-fourth amendment provided for the decentralization of power at the municipal level, which has remained an unrealized dream. Hyogo and Sendai frameworks also stress on national and local level mobilization for disaster risk management. But even these international frameworks not consider how global structural factors, which are out of bounds of local controls, influence the status of disaster risks.

NDMA is topmost organization for disaster management in India. It has fallen short of successfully coordinating with state and district authorities. Rather many times, other government bodies are found to be filling the shoes. This is because of dispersed responsibilities for different disaster and no mandatory power to enforce its guidelines. NDMA guidelines provide for city disaster management committee, formation of community-based disaster management plans, and urban citizens’ forum for disaster risk reduction in the cities [ 21 ]. But none of such active bodies or plans can be found in Telangana with national and state level coordination.

NDMA is more occupied with rescue, relief, and rehabilitation. There is no institutionally centered mechanism for collecting the disaster risk data and archiving the disaster lived experiences of population, rather agencies mostly function on ad-hoc generation of data [ 22 ]. Another area of concern is the identification of victims, which becomes more challenging in case of mass fatalities in disaster, and NDMA plans/guidelines do not address victim identification process [ 23 ]. In terms of financing DRR, there is still no clarity on disaster mitigation fund even though supreme court has also urged for its creation as per Section 47 of Disaster Management Act 2005 [ 24 ]. Rather, its absence is justified by the presence of many existing social sector schemes [ 25 ].

Further, more than decade after disaster management act 2005, center has failed to convince and convey the urgency for the need of independent disaster management bodies and their coordination with various departments across sectors. Many states still do not have full-fledged disaster management plan to imbibe the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. At national level, recently National Disaster Management Policy 2016 was prepared.

At meso level, there are serious gaps in policy framing and implementation. Disaster Management Act 2005 under Section 14 asserts for the formation of SDMAs for effective disaster management. Telangana has formed State Disaster Management Response and Fire Services. But it is more concerned with fire safety, even training and evacuation procedures are also limited to fire incidents. There are no concrete guidelines, procedures, and mock drills for flood evacuation. As seen in floods during 2016, it heavily relies on the response of NDRF for evacuation and rescue operations. In Section 22, mandates for drawing state disaster management plan as per national plan, and under Section 28, SDMA is to ensure a disaster management plan for all departments. The Telangana State Action Plan for Climate Change only briefly mentions the floods and does not even address urban flooding as the particular challenge facing the cities in the state. In City of Hyderabad, only administrative structure to be found is the disaster management cell under GHMC. Absence of proper administrative structures and comprehensive plans results in conflict and poor accountability in disaster management.

Another concern at meso level is urban policy, which directly influences the land use change in the city. Socioeconomically, vulnerable populations inhabiting the low lying river and lake bed areas are most affected during flooding in the city. Specifically, in Hyderabad, there is continuous inhabitation along the Musi River, which at many places such as Chaderghat, Shankar Nagar Colony, and so on get inundated, and overflowing sewage/wastewater frequently enters into the houses. Poor provisions of basic amenities as proper closed drainage for wastewater further worsen the situation. Not surprisingly, drinking water many times may get mixed with wastewater. The weak regulation of land use provision in the urban policy is the primary reason for diversion of eco-sensitive areas for fulfilling the real-estate aspirations. Hence, a state level urban policy sensitive toward the needs of vulnerable population will inspire municipal bodies for proactive flood resilient outlook for the city.

Urban mega projects such as outer ring road and Hyderabad Metro project have also compromised urban flood resilience. Metro project has been very contentious with questions on land acquisition in eco-sensitive sites in the city, lack of public engagement, and sidelining of municipal body [ 26 ]. In case of outer ring road (ORR), supposedly a road-cum-area development project was in violation of Government Order (GO) (see [ 27 ]), and nearly half of the land required was under agriculture. The erstwhile Government of Andhra Pradesh has been directly involved in encroachments of lakes by omitting full tank level (FTL) markings and particularly in case of Hussain Sagar Lake by building the memorial parks [ 28 ]. Such diversion of large agriculture tracts, vegetation, lake/river beds, and their rapid concretization has been one of the primary reasons behind the increased surface runoff resulting in flooding. State government initiatives for riverfront development as Nandanavanam project in 1997 and Save Musi Campaign in 2005 were ill conceived, which led to eviction and public interest litigations. Latest attempt of grander project was announced in 2017, which was put on hold, while Musi River continues to be polluted, encroached, and prone to flooding [ 29 ].

Analysis at micro city level in Hyderabad further reveals the existing policy gaps; particularly, it is helpful in discerning gaps in implementation of policy at ground level. Municipal planning process can be traced to the formation of Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA) in 1975. It is in the wake of liberalization and decentralization in the 1990s that a new phase of urban process followed, which completely changed the city. Urban flooding is geographically local phenomenon, and municipal bodies are at forefront in facing the immediate challenges of urban flooding. Even then, since the 1990s, Hyderabad municipal governance body has either been sidelined or downgraded as the city has seen long periods of democratic deficits and administrative vacuum [ 30 ].

This has coincided with the proliferation of state supported parastatal bodies, which were out of the preview of municipal bodies but had large role to play in the development of city infrastructure. Hyderabad municipal bodies had no involvement whatsoever in their formation or working of these bodies. These parastatal bodies were created for specific purposes to turn Hyderabad into a global city and favorite destination of investments. But this has compromised the city’s flood resilience not only in terms of infrastructure but also putting more vulnerable people at risk of flooding. Some of such bodies are Hyderabad Airport Development Authority (HADA), Cyberabad Development Authority (CDA), and many other Industrial Area Local Authorities (IALAs).

HADA acquired land in the catchment area of Himayatsagar Lake, threating the existence of the water body. Development of Cyberabad and nearby Serilingampally ward saw influx rural migrants sheltering in slums. As per the Census 2011, the ward of Serilingampally has one of poorest provision of basic amenities in Hyderabad. The above concretization of city has been because of flouting of building bylaws resulting in vanishing agricultural land, vegetation, and water bodies. This has reduced the capacity of the land to absorb rain water and increased the runoff flow. The whole process of parastatal bodies for the creation of world class enclaves has put greater number of people at risk of urban flooding.

The creation of parastatal bodies has also been the reason for limited financial capacity of Hyderabad Municipal Corporation to take up effective flood management and preparedness. As per provisions for governing IALAs, significant part of building fees and property taxes is kept internally; hence, collected revenue is barely shared with GHMC [ 31 ]. Creation of such bodies also surpasses democratic process as the decision-making process does not involve the elected member of municipality. Rather that is the primary reason, such bodies are created to cut through the scrutiny and achieve faster implementation of the plans by the state. This has only undermined the city’s flood resilience as in pursuit of global city imaginary, basic urban challenges of provision of efficient drainage and protection of urban commons have been neglected.

Such pursuits of seeing city as engines of growth by creating parastatal bodies and bypassing democratic institutions have its origin in neoliberal supra local forces. The imagination of Chief minister Chandrababu Naidu of transforming Hyderabad as information city was influenced by Malaysia’s technological corridors, which in turn are based on silicon valley imaginations. To persuade for investment of funds in Hyderabad, under the aegis of World Bank and IMF, Naidu hired McKinsey for preparing a model development plan that resulted in AP vision 2020, which guided the transformation of the city in the next decades [ 32 ]. The effort to project the city as technological hub was successful, and the following concretization left the landscape flood prone with accentuated disparities.

Influence of supra local forces, which are independent of municipal body engagement and bypass democratic institutors, has also seen development of many special economic zones (SEZs). And as mentioned earlier even though the high court had initially prohibited any mining activities inside the ORR, it was exempted for some to supply of raw material for developing SEZs. One can only imagine the two folded damage of quarrying, and increased pace of concretization would have done to city’s flood resilience.

Other than above forces, role of GHMC has not been encouraging in city’s increased vulnerability to floods. Areas near the drains in several localities such as Malkajgiri, Alwal, and Ashoknagar were completely inundated during floods in 2016 and 2017. There is only 1200 km of storm water drains with carrying capacity of only 2 cm of rain/hour [ 33 ]. The Kirloskar report had suggested demolition of many structures and widening of drains, which has been long pending. As in case of other urban agglomeration, major development activities in Hyderabad are guided by Master Plans. Fragmentary nature of process can be seen in master plans for the city. Surpassing the existing institutional structures and master plan for the city, new agencies like CDA were provided with special master plan with separate building rules, land use, and financial instruments [ 34 ]. This has only exacerbated the tendency to see the planning area in isolation from its broader socioecological context. Poor implementation and lack of harmonization between the master plans have left it more vulnerable to floods over the years.

The HUDA’s 2003 draft master plan proposed to increase area under water bodies to 95.44 sq.km by 2020. But, the area has shrunk by over 10 sq.km, and there were no modalities in plan for reclaiming the lost area [ 16 ]. The zoning regulation in the latest Development Plan 2031 (Master Plan) for the Hyderabad Metropolitan Region also has no priorities for the protection of areas such as farm and scrub land, which act as sponge for absorbing rain for the city [ 35 ], thus leaving the land vulnerable for real estate aspirations and urban flooding in the coming years.

3.3 Toward urban flood resilience

Resilience requires attention toward transformative attributes and long-term process that help system absorb shocks and stressors. Focus for building resilience to urban flooding can range from strengthening specific resilience at local level to general resilience at national and global levels. For rapidly growing cities, this involves efficient coordination and collaboration at various administrative levels for assisting gradual changes while being attentive of indirect impacts [ 36 ].

Resilience strategies are embedded in sociopolitical power structures; hence at international and national policy levels, an impact assessment of global structural factors’ influence on local disaster risks is much needed. Accordingly, strengthening and guiding of local bodies by coordination of national and state level bodies are an essential step in giving responsive governance and building resilience to disasters. This may be achieved by giving mandatory power to NDMA to enforce the guidelines. Disaster risk mapping, data collection, and archiving are increasingly central to efficient response, which can be institutionalized in NDMA or with National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM). NDRF has been shining armor in times of crisis and can mentor State Disaster Response Force (SDRF). For identification of disaster, victim’s Interpol’s DVI process may be followed [ 23 ].

Objectives of 74th amendment can be achieved by actively engaging district disaster management authority (DDMA) through community participation in making local level plans, forums, and committees for disaster management. Engagement with civil society groups is another area where lot may be achieved as in Hyderabad, there are many active organizations such as Hyderabad Greens, Forum for a Better Hyderabad, and so on, which can contribute immensely to resilience building.

National Disaster Management Policy 2016 places lot of emphasis on flood early warning systems and generating awareness through various mechanisms. It advocates for ward level risk mapping and vulnerability assessment and setting up of urban flooding cell for integrated urban flood management at municipal level. In New Brunswick, Canada, the land use controls were even linked with flood risk mapping with different restrictions for high- and low-risk zones [ 37 ]. NDMA guidelines on management of urban flood offer many practical and innovative solutions such as rain gardens, detention ponds, and lined channels [ 38 ]. Emphasis is much needed for interagency and interstate coordination through NDMA and SDMAs. For financing DRR, there is robust institutional mechanism of National and State Disaster Response Funds. There is a need for more targeted financing for mitigation measures, which can be achieved by the creation of disaster mitigation fund and by encouraging micro insurance cover to low-income groups as highlighted in Prime Minister’s Ten-Point Agenda on DRR [ 39 ].

Telangana State has taken proactive steps by strengthening the disaster response force and deploying the monsoon teams during heavy rainfall. An independent SDMA nodal body along with SDRF involved in integrated plans, evacuations strategies, frequent mock drills, and generating awareness can go long way in streamlining the fragmented nature of disaster planning. Comprehensive state and district disaster plan well aligned with national plan following the vision of Sendai framework will mainstream disaster with development processes for specifically integrating flood mitigation and preparedness at all levels. For early warning, Telangana planning development society (TPDS) has been involved in weather monitoring on real-time basis through automated station and sensors. Central water commission also assists in early warning with its network of river gauge and rainfall stations. Further, Telangana state remote sensing application center actively involved in modeling, forecasting, and giving assessment reports for decision making. Presently, in environmental clearance/impact assessment, pollution control board and state environmental impact assessment bodies are responsible. A greater involvement of SDMAs in developmental decisions will catalyze streamlining and mainstreaming of disaster preparedness.

Urban policies are not only mere top down instrument for stimulating economic growth but also opportunity for bottom up engagement of residents, municipality, and civil society for steering toward sustainable disaster resilient cities. Hyderabad has many lakes, and their protection following the GO 111 and demarcation of FTL boundaries will be helpful in protecting them. Planning for catchment area for Musi River along with water treatment and segregation of solid waste disposal will not only revive the river but also reduce the runoff water during the heavy rainfall. Implementation of land use and zoning regulations in execution of mega urban projects will be instrumental in protecting eco-sensitive sites and restricting mindless concretization of city. The government of Germany and England adopted the concept of “room for rivers” and “making space for water,” respectively, which makes land use regulation central to flood management. Germany has ensured flood mitigation with more restrictive approach of land use policy based on the return period of 100-year floods [ 40 ].

Political decentralization at the municipal level is central to building disaster resilience in the cities. Active engagement of local institution in developmental decisions instead of leaving them in vacuum will give them greater administrative exposure, which has direct impact on land use change and flood resilience in the city. It will also further the much needed public oversight on the supra local forces of urbanization along with fair sharing of revenue with parastatal bodies or subsuming them to strengthen flood preparedness capacity. Provision of basic amenities empowers people to cope with disruption caused by urban flooding. Many wards such as Serilingampally, Rajendra nagar, and Hafeezpet have poor provision of basic amenities as closed drainage and treated drinking water [ 41 ]. Weak housing structure and poor basic amenities particularly in old city area have to be addressed through ward level targeted approach.

Building bylaws in the city encourage rain water harvesting, which help in reduction of run off and flood hazards. They also provide for not sanctioning building permits to floodable areas with nonpercolating soils or more than 45 degrees of slopes or for not taking proper measures of drainage [ 42 ]. Floor space index is another instrument through which sustainable urban form in the city can be promoted. No building or development activity is allowed in bed of water bodies and FTL of lake, ponds, and so on [ 43 ]. Implementation of model building bylaws and provisions of open spaces will assist in sustainable urban development and flood resilience. Regular inspection and impact assessment of industries/constructions for compliance and protection of water bodies as per water and waste management acts/rules will accelerate the flood resilience in the city [ 44 , 45 , 46 ].

Sewage and storm water drains have to be delinked to avoid congestion and mixing of runoff water. By taking into consideration, the natural contours of flow, existing drainage pattern and neighborhood catchment area, maintenance of an integrated storm water system are essential for long-term flood resilience in the city. Kirloskar & later Voyants report had already provided recommendations, and its implementation will strengthen the storm drainage. Master plan should focus more on socioenvironmental factors, restoring urban water bodies, vegetation, and creating a network of multifunctional open spaces. Master plan of Auroville adopted the concept of bioregion where part of area is designated for green growth for environmental restoration, regeneration, and biodiversity. Mandi planning area adopted the zone of “no construction” in the land below the high flood level and “green zone” in a belt of 25 m buffer along the banks of river [ 47 ]. A convergence of hierarchy of plans may be developed as regional plan, town plan, and neighborhood plan along with master plan. These measures will essentially require coming out of silos and periodical review of planning processes.

4. Conclusion

There still exists gap between Sendai framework, national, and provincial level disaster management. Particularly highlighting is the seemingly lack of urgency and poor integration with developmental plans. Policy frameworks at state level influence land use decisions and distribution of public services. Weak land use regulations transpire into degrading natural resources and creating multilevel vulnerabilities. At micro-city level, the development activities are framed under broad master plans and subjected to building bylaws. But, flouting of these laws has led to mushrooming of settlements in the low lying flood prone areas. Particularly noticeable is the influence of parastatal bodies and supra local market forces which often bypass regulations and democratic processes. In this scenario, water bodies, forest, agricultural land, and open spaces are being consumed at accelerated rate to produce real estate products. Current policy approaches being clouded by the neoliberal self and technocratic narratives still see disasters management as separate from developmental processes. The resulting poor multi-institutional coordination can only be overcome by empowering key institutions with agenda cutting across sectors and departments both horizontally and vertically. Focus on green growth and flood proofing with engagement of all stakeholders will play a central role in mainstreaming DRR.

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Introduction, results and discussion, summary and conclusions, data availability statement, conflict of interest, flood-susceptibility-based building risk under climate change, hyderabad, india.

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R. Madhuri , K. Srinivasa Raju , A. Vasan; Flood-susceptibility-based building risk under climate change, Hyderabad, India. Journal of Water and Climate Change 1 July 2023; 14 (7): 2150–2163. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wcc.2023.482

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Urban floods have been highly prominent natural disasters occurring in catchments across the globe, causing financial loss and damage to buildings. This necessitates effective and sustainable mitigation mechanisms. In this context, flood-susceptibility-based building risk (FSBR), a combined index for evaluating flood susceptibility and building risk simultaneously to understand the impact of the flood, is proposed by fusing XGBoost (facilitates flood susceptibility) and Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System 2D (enables building risk) in climate change situations. The methodology is applied to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, India. Six combinations of FSBR, namely, high building risk and high flood susceptibility (HH), high and medium (HM), medium and medium (MM), medium and high (MH), low and medium (LM), and low and high (LH) are employed to study the urban floods. The total affected areas for HH, HM, MH, MM, LH, and LM are 63.40 km 2 (52.627%), 28.92 km 2 (24%), 9.52 km 2 (7.9%), 4.81 km 2 (3.99%), 9.26 km 2 (7.686%), and 4.56 km 2 (3.79%) (totalling 120.47 km 2 ). The number of corresponding buildings is 182,178, 84,136, 46,238, 22,691, 48,092, and 23,781. Waterproofing as a mitigation measure is considered. The total cost of waterproofing is Rs 4,964.60 cr.

Machine learning and hydraulic modelling are complemented to derive an indicator, flood-susceptibility-based building risk (FSBR), for the urban catchment.

Six combinations of FSBR are employed to study urban floods.

Waterproofing as a mitigation measure is studied.

area under the receiver operating characteristic

boosted regression tree

classification and regression tree

deep learning neural network

equivalent annual cost

flood-susceptibility-based building risk

flood susceptibility modelling

general circulation models

Google Earth Engine

Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation

Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System 2D

high building risk and high flood susceptibility

high building risk and medium flood susceptibility

high-risk buildings

low building risk and high flood susceptibility

low building risk and medium flood susceptibility

low-risk buildings

medium building risk and high flood susceptibility

machine learning

medium building risk and medium flood susceptibility

MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer

medium-risk buildings

neural networks

National Remote Sensing Centre

representative concentration pathways

Random Forest

support vector machine

Telangana Public Health & Municipal Engineering Department

Telangana State Development Planning Society

eXtreme Gradient Boosting

Urban floods have been highly prominent natural disasters occurring in catchments across the globe. Some related factors are low-lying areas, clogged drains, settlements in flood-plain areas, and impervious surfaces. In addition, the widening gap between the increase in urbanization and available infrastructure is a major challenge. This inadequacy, in turn, will not be able to mitigate the impact of urban floods effectively. Another dimension is climate change, evidenced by high-intensity, short-duration, high-frequency rainfall affecting cities significantly ( Nkwunonwo et al. 2020 ). This increases the quantity of water during most of the mentioned situations, which impacts the flooding area and escalates the flood susceptibility ( Hammond et al. 2015 ).

Many floods have occurred in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Vadodara. These cities have faced substantial financial losses and property damage ( Flood Report 2021 ). In Hyderabad, severe floods occurred in 2000, 2006, 2016, 2018, and 2021. The flood depth range is 1–4 m in many locations ( Rangari et al. 2021 ). Mumbai is another major city affected by urban floods due to climate change, as evidenced by the extreme rainfall of 944 mm for 24 h in 2005 ( Sahany et al. 2010 ; Mumbai floods 2021 ). The case is similar with cities like Chennai, Bengaluru, and Vadodara, which are highly affected by urban floods ( Vadodara floods 2019 ; Bengaluru floods 2021 ; Chennai floods 2021 ).

Literature review

Numerous modelling approaches are employed to compute flood susceptibility. Machine learning (ML) is gaining momentum in classifying flood-susceptible regions due to its flexibility and adaptability ( Baghbani et al. 2022 ; Saha et al. 2022 ). Shahabi et al. (2021) employed a deep belief–back propagation–genetic algorithm for Iran's Haraz watershed to generate flood susceptibility modelling (FSM). It was compared with other benchmarking ML techniques and found to be superior. Abedi et al. (2022) implemented the classification and regression tree (CART), XGBoost, random forest (RF), and boosted regression trees (BRT) to create an FSM of the Bâsca Chiojdului river basin. RF was found to be the best. Antzoulatos et al. (2022) employed RF, support vector machine (SVM), naive-based RF, and neural networks (NNs) to assess flood susceptibility in the Trieste, Monfalcone, and Muggia municipalities, northeast Italy. The RF model was highly rated with an F1 score of 0.99, followed by SVM, naive-based RF, and NN. Taromideh et al. (2022) reviewed ML applications to flood aspects at length. CART, RF, BRT, and several other models were employed to create an urban flood risk map for a case study in Iran. CART performed better than other ML algorithms.

General circulation models (GCMs) and associated representative concentration pathways (RCPs) are utilized for climate-based study. They help reproduce the historic observed climatic changes. Zennaro et al. (2021) studied the role of ML algorithms in climate change risk assessment and provided future directions. Chakrabortty et al. (2021) assessed flood susceptibility based on artificial neural networks (ANNs), deep boost (DB), and deep learning neural network in a climate change perspective for a case study in West Bengal, India. DB is the most preferred when compared with the others. They also studied flood susceptibility in detail in climate change scenarios. In summary, ML algorithms predict flood susceptibility but not flood depth (or building risk), which only hydraulic models can handle.

A few researchers have considered building risk an essential objective in vulnerability assessment for urban cities ( Hossain & Meng 2020 ). It could be computed with inundation areas and flood depth information at the location. Park et al. (2021) studied flood risk assessment in Ulsan City, South Korea, using Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System 2D (HEC-RAS 2D) for 2016. The inundated area was found to be 0.01–11.71 km 2 , and the average flood depth for each administrative district was 0.47–1.20 m. A total of 20.6% of buildings were exposed to flood, resulting in high flood damage. Chen et al. (2022) assessed the flood risk map of Taiwan under RCP 8.5. It was concluded that approximately 14% of townships had high-risk buildings (HRBs). Ventimiglia et al. (2020) suggested waterproofing measures for the Mela River in northeastern Sicily, and Alabbad et al. (2022) for Iowa Middle Cedar Watershed to reduce property vulnerability and losses that would minimize building risk.

Computation of FSBR

Computation of cost of waterproofing that mitigates FSBR

Details of year and rainfall, flood water depth, and damage to the city of Hyderabad

Study area and data collection

The GHMC area is 625 km 2 and is divided into various zones and circles ( Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation 2023 ). The annual average rainfall is 840 mm and is at the maximum from June to September, leading to heavy flash floods. Average temperatures during winter and summer are 22 and 30 °C. The mean hottest and coldest months are May and December, respectively. The average annual rainy days and dry days are 56 and 265. The average maximum and minimum relative humidities in winter are 79% and 31%, whereas those in summer are 67% and 26%, respectively ( TSDPS 2021 ).

Data and its sources

(a) Watershed area of GHMC (modified and adapted from GHMC; numbers indicating storm water zones) and (b) elevation map of GHMC.

Description of methods employed and modelling ahead

The present article is a logical extension of the previous works of the authors ( Madhuri et al. 2021a , 2021b ), where information about modelling was discussed in detail for GHMC. Five ML algorithms, SVM, logistic regression (LR), K -nearest neighbour (KNN), AdaBoost, and XGBoost, are applied to understand the flood susceptibility of GHMC for historical data. Eight flood-influencing factors were used for this purpose. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) is one of the standard methods for validating the model's performance ( Tehrany et al. 2015 ). It is a graphical approach that describes the change in the algorithm's classification ability, as the probability threshold is altered ( Shahabi et al. 2021 ). It compares and validates ML algorithms.

XGBoost is found to be the best, with a mean AUROC score of 0.83 and a standard deviation of 0.04. It is closely followed by AdaBoost, which has a mean AUROC score of 0.82 with a standard deviation of 0.04. Both algorithms significantly outperformed LR, SVM, and KNN with respective AUROC scores of 0.71, 0.74, and 0.77. Corresponding standard deviations are 0.07, 0.06, and 0.06.

Later, the study was analysed in climate change situations, as mentioned in the study area section. The flood susceptibilities generated from XGBoost for RCP 2.6 are classified into two different ranges, i.e., 30%–70% as moderate (M) and 70%–100% as high susceptibility (H), respectively. The 30% flood susceptibility value indicates a 30% chance of flooding in that location/pixel.

Workflow for generating FSBR.

If building risk due to flood depth obtained by HEC-RAS 2D is high (H) and flood susceptibility obtained by ML algorithm is high (H), it is termed HH in the context of FSBR. It is high-priority combination that needs immediate action for mitigation measures by policy-makers. Suppose two buildings with high risk are situated in medium- and low-susceptibility areas; in that case, the priority is a medium-susceptible area. Six combinations of FSBR, namely, high building risk and high flood susceptibility (HH), high and medium (HM), medium and medium (MM), medium and high (MH), low and medium (LM), and low and high (LH) are employed to study the urban floods. Results related to flood susceptibility, building risk, and FSBR are discussed in the next section.

Flood susceptibility using XGBoost

Flood-susceptible areas (in km 2 ) for RCP 2.6 ( Madhuri et al. 2021a )

Note: No buildings and roads are in the low-susceptibility category.

Building risk based on HEC-RAS 2D

Percentage of flooded and non-flooded zones and zone-wise flood depth ranges and percentage of HRB, MRB, and LRB for RCP 2.6 ( Madhuri et al. 2021b )

Zones 1 and 5 have high percentage inundation areas of 81% and 75% as they are near the Musi River and exist in low-lying areas. Zone 11 has the least percentage of inundation area of 61% due to its high elevation level. Zones 12 and 13 have flood depths of 0.3–8 and 0.2–6.8 m. This is due to rapid urbanization in these zones. Zones 1, 5, 8, and 15 are equally vulnerable, with flood depth ranges of 0.3–5.7, 0.2–5.8, 0.1–4.3, and 0.2–5.1 m. This may be due to their proximity to the Musi River and its low elevation of 466–525 m. The ranges of zone-wise percentages of HRB, MRB, and LRB are 38%–70%, 8%–18%, and 21%–49%, respectively. The highest number of HRBs was found in Zone 5, followed by Zone 1. It can be found that there is a greater number of LRB in zones 9, 3, and 14, as these are at relatively higher elevations. Inundated area, flood depth, and percentage of HRB, MRB, and LRB, respectively, GHMC-wise, are 442.53 km 2 , 0.1–8 m, 51%, 13%, and 36%, respectively. The inundation area is 67%, more than half of the catchment area. This may be due to high-intensity, short-duration rainfall in the catchment.

Building footprint map showing LRB–MRB–HRB as inundated with low, medium, and high flood depths.

Flood-susceptibility-based building risk

FSBR for total area affected for RCP 2.6 (numbers on top of bars are zone numbers, where the maximum affected area is observed).

FSBR for number of buildings affected for RCP 2.6 (numbers on top of bars are zone numbers, where maximum number of affected buildings are observed).

In the HH category, zones 5, 15, 12, and 3 have affected areas of 13.07, 10.04, 8.50, and 7.64 km 2 with the corresponding number of buildings, 27,622, 30,850, 30,462, and 24,159, respectively. In contrast, the number of buildings in zone 9 is significantly less. This may be because of high elevation levels between 561 and 602 m. Zones 5 and 15 together occupied 36% of the total affected area. This may be due to their vicinity to the Musi River. In the HM category, zones 13, 12, 15, and 5 have 18,112, 16,148, 13,476, and 8,313 buildings with affected areas of 5.92, 4.85, 4.05, and 3.94 km 2 , respectively. Zones 2, 7, 9, and 14 are the least affected.

In the case of MH, zones 12, 13, 15, and 8 have 11,102, 6,353, 5,996, and 6,411 buildings with affected areas of 2.25, 1.28, 1.22, and 1.09 km 2 , respectively. Zones 12 and 13 have the highest curve number values, leading to high FSBR to flooding. In the MM category, zones 12, 13, 15, and 8 have 5,886, 4,732, 3,257, and 1,714 buildings with total affected areas of 1.36, 0.95, 0.66, and 0.46 km 2 , respectively. Zones 2, 6, 9, and 16 have fewer buildings affected by floods as they are very far from the Musi River or at high elevation levels. Also, they have fewer pervious areas than zones 12, 13, 15, and 8.

In the LH category, zones 12, 15, 13, and 8 have 12,075, 6,652, 6,288, and 4,445 buildings with total affected areas of 2.28, 1.20, 1.18, and 1.11 km 2 . Zones 12 and 15 occupy 25.1% and 13.83%, respectively, of the total affected buildings in this category.

Both these zones are more prone to flooding. In the LM category, zones 12, 13, 15, and 8 have total affected areas of 1.34, 0.88, 0.64, and 0.42 km 2 with 6,338, 4,794, 3,624, and 1,825 buildings. Almost 26.6% and 20.16% of the total affected buildings are in zones 12 and 13, respectively. In the HH, HM, MH, and MM categories, the maximum total affected areas in zones 15, 13, 12, and 12 are 10.04, 5.92, 2.25, and 1.36 km 2 . The high slope of 19.13° for zone 15, areas near the Musi River, and the imperviousness of zone 12 are causes of urban flooding.

GHMC: In the case of the HH, HM, MH, MM, LH, and LM categories, the total affected areas are 63.40, 28.92, 9.52, 4.81, 9.26, and 4.56 km 2 (totalling 120.47 km 2 ) with 182,178, 84,136, 46,238, 22,691, 48,092, and 23,781 buildings (totalling 407,116). The least number of buildings and flood-affected areas are in the LM category.

Waterproofing for reducing FSBR

Only salient points are described here to understand the impact of waterproofing measures on the affected area and exposed buildings.

Zone-wise analysis

Number of buildings, waterproofing cost, and EAC/building for RCP 2.6

The tax benefits for implementing waterproofing measures can be provided to the house owner. This can be 1%–2% of the construction cost. This will encourage an individual to invest in waterproofing measures.

Flood insurance/waterproofing bonds can be a better option for encouraging house owners to invest in waterproofing measures. This will enable people to safeguard their houses and families from a catastrophe.

Use corporate social responsibility funds to safeguard public buildings against flood risk.

Buildings and roads have high susceptible areas of 57.59 and 22.76 km 2 .

The inundated area is 442.53 km 2 , with ranges of flood depth being 0.1–8 m.

Percentages of HRB, MRB, and LRB, respectively, are 38%–70%, 8%–18%, and 21%–49%.

This is the first-time application where ML and hydraulic modelling are complemented to derive an indicator, FSBR, for the urban catchment. The aim of this study is not to replicate the previous research works, but to give a new framework to researchers interested in this research area.

Data cannot be made publicly available; readers should contact the corresponding author for details.

The authors declare there is no conflict.

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Explained: Why floods occur in Hyderabad

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Floodplain mapping and management of urban catchment using hec-ras: a case study of hyderabad city, design of urban storm water drainage system using gis and swmm software, assessment of inundation risk in urban floods using hec ras 2d, simulation of urban drainage system using a storm water management model (swmm), urban floods in hyderabad, india, under present and future rainfall scenarios: a case study, urban flood risk analysis of buildings using hec-ras 2d in climate change framework, the importance of the ‘urban’ in agricultural-to-urban water transfers:insights from comparative research in india and china, simulation of the hydraulic model hec-ras coupled with gis and remote sensing to study the effect of river cross-section width in detecting flood-prone areas, rapid assessment of the october 2020 hyderabad urban flood and risk analysis using geospatial data, 2 references, related papers.

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Half of Hyderabad buildings face flood risk: Study

Hyderabad: More than half of the buildings located in the GHMC limits are at high risk of getting affected in the event of floods, according to a flood susceptibility-based building risk (FSBR) under climate change research conducted by the BITS Pilani Hyderabad, in the GHMC area.

The study also predicted an extremely heavy rainfall of 1,740.62 mm, occuring in the year 2040, which is almost eight times more than what the city has received in August 2020 (241.5mm). This has been attributed to drastic climate changes and also the increase in land use.

Buildings and roads have highly susceptible areas of 57.59 percent and 22.76 Sq kms and the inundated area is 442.53 km2 , with flood depth ranging between 0.1–8m, found Dr Madhuri Rampalli, who conducted this study under the guidance of Professors K. Srinivasa Raju and A. Vasan of the Department of Civil Engineering.

She suggested Waterproofing the buildings under the high risk category, diverting the water to resource filtration basins, wells, for ground water recharging, as mitigation measures. The total cost of waterproofing the high risk category buildings is Rs. 4,964.60 cr, the study estimated.

FSBR is a combined index for evaluating flood susceptibility and building risk simultaneously to understand the impact of the flood, according to climate change aspects based on the General Circulation Model (GCM, GFDL-CM3), and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 2.6).

For the study, GHMC area was divided into 16 zones and it found the most vulnerable locations to flooding are situated near the Hussain Sagar and Musi River. Kothapet, Mansoorabad, Falaknuma, Kacheguda and Begum Bazar have high percentage inundation areas as they are near the Musi River and exist in low-lying areas.

According to the study, the highest number of High Risk buildings were found in Falaknuma, Kacheguda and Begum Bazar Zones, followed by Kothapet, Mansoorabad zones. Greater number of Low Risk buildings were found in Gachibowli, Vanasthalipuram and Kapra zones as they are at relatively higher elevations.

Chandanagar has the least percentage of inundation area due to its high elevation level. Kukatpally has flood depth of 0.3 - 8m, and Vidyanagar and Ramnagar have flood depths of 0.2 – 6.8m. This is due to rapid urbanization in these zones, the study found.

Meanwhile, Prof Dr D Vijay Kishore from the Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University said that in view of the rapid expansion of the city and a new city all together taking shape abutting the ORR towards the west, Government should work in tandem with all stakeholders to come up with an emphasis on underground drainage system, smooth run of surface water and also on the low lying areas. “ We have to see what is happening in Delhi, Mumbai and several other places and prepare a plan for our city accordingly,” he added.

1 Kothapet, Mansoorabad

2 Hayathnagar

3 Vanasthalipuram

4 Saroor Nagar, Kanchanbagh

5 Falaknuma, Kacheguda and Begum Bazar

6 Attapur, Goshamahal

7 Rajendra Nagar

8 Mehdipatnam, Jubilee Hills, Panjagutta

9 Gachibowli

10 Serilingampally, BHEL

11 Chandanagar

12 Kukatpally

13 Vidyanagar, Ramnagar

15 Tarnaka, Nacharam

16 Cherlapally

Waterproofing for reducing FSBR:

Waterproofing is the mechanism to restrain the entry of water into the walls and rooftops of a building. It will also increase the life cycle of buildings considerably and employed to reduce the FSBR in terms of the total affected area and the number of exposed buildings

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