Climate Resilient Cities and Disaster Management

Resource Person: Dr. Kshithij Amodekar, Head of Sustainability & Climate change, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India 
“Dr. Kshithij Amodekar has a multidisciplinary experience in projects in all continents of the world. He has worked on several projects, master planning, In fracture, retail, Hospitality, Housing, commercial, Manufacturing, Social front with NGO’s and also sustainable energy. This has given him insights in the world of business and deep understanding of development of business along with socio-economic ecology capital management”.
 
Description of Event:
The School of CIVIL Engineering in association with UIIC, REVA University had organized Skill Development Programme conducted by Green Skill Academy for 3rd Semester A, B, C, D & E section students of Civil Engineering, REVA University on “Climate Resilient Cities & Disaster Management” on 14th ,15th & 16th of October, 2019 between 8:30AM to 4:30 PM. This policy brief examines the potential implications of climate change for disaster preparedness and emergency management in cities of India, and presents options by which the resilience of these systems may be enhanced. Around 100 students of 3rd semester Civil Engineering were benefited from the eminent resource person Dr. Kshithij Amodekar 

The level of resilience of our cities and towns is dependent on the quality and performance of the overall urban system. Adaptation to climate change and focus on disaster risk reduction is becoming increasingly relevant as the negative impacts of climate change increase. “There needs to be a shift, in both adaptations to climate change and disaster risk reduction, from a singular and specific focus on affected infrastructures and locations towards a more integrated focus on overall risks, development conditions, and local area performance”

• Mainstreaming climate and disaster risk reduction to become factors in conventional planning processes, project design and development decision making. 
• Developing specialized financial instruments for the risk-oriented components of these projects that cannot be addressed via mainstreaming measures. 
• Building local institutional capacity to prepare, structure and manage large scale redevelopment

CHALLENGES

• Lack of understanding of the impacts of climate change and the fact that adaptation interventions are best employed and covered at local level. 
• Creating awareness amongst the local government that adaptation is synonym to their functions and their development goals 
• Already pressing development pressures might overlook adaptation issues 
• Integrating adaptation at municipal level would be difficult because of the perception of contest for budget.
• Lack of capacity within the local government. 
• Development plans of cities do not factor climate change related factors in a targeted way. 
• Translation of global impacts of climate change to local level (downscaling) has been missing 
• Lack of data and modeling framework at the city level