Sustainability of Smart Cities under Climate Variability and Climate Change in India

Abstract:

India has experienced a rapid urbanization during the past few decades. On the other hand, many parts of the country witnessed significant changes in mean and extreme climate related to precipitation and temperature. Here we analysed urban residence using the remotely sensed data considering the susceptibility of Indian cities to droughts and heat waves. We selected recently announced 100 urban areas that are planned to be developed as smart cities in future. Gridded precipitation data were used to compute SPEI values for frequency and ascertain the extent of droughts in the cities. The heat wave analysis was done in two phases. First phase included analysis using Heat Wave Magnitude Index (HWMI) to determine the intensity of such extreme events. In the second phase, Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect across different ecological configuration was studied for the cities. Land Surface Temperature (LST), urban extent map from MODIS and land-cover maps were used to study the UHI effect. For this, the urban extents were divided into urban core and sub-urban zones based on built up regions in the cities. The urban to rural temperature difference is analysed considering the ecological configuration in the region. The selected cities were categorised based on the biome features surrounding them. The results suggest aggravated condition in the urban space in India with reference to extreme events. For instance, extreme heat waves have substantially increased in India during the last few decades. In many urban areas, the UHI effect contributed a significant warming due to increased urbanization. We estimated projected changes in droughts and heat waves in the selected urban areas using the dynamically downscaled data from the region climate models. Our results suggest that a majority of urban areas are projected to face an elevated risk of temperature related extremes and issues of water sustainability in the coming decades.