flood management in urban assam - muqammalcr.commuqammalcr.com/pdf/9. flood management in urban...

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September 2018

Flood Management in Urban AssamA policy note for practitioners

w w w . a c t i o n o n c l i m a t e . t o d a y

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 NemaneInside images: ACT

Authors: Divya Sharma, Rizwan Uz Zaman, Shashikant Chopde, Ajay Katuri, Vinaya Padmanabhan, Rashmi Dutta Dey and Partha Thakuria

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Flood Management in Urban Assam: a policy note for practitioners

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 9Co

nten

ts

2


Abbreviations

ACT Action on Climate Today

ASDMA Assam State Disaster Management Authority

CCIP Climate Change Innovation Programme

CPGD Climate Proofing Growth and Development

DDMA District Disaster Management Authority

DFID Department for International Development

FLEWS Flood Forecasting and Early Warning System

HRVA Hazards Risk and Vulnerability Assessments

PPCP Public Private Community Partnership

SOP Standard Operating Procedures

UN United Nations

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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 floods1. 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 floods2.

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.

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 TheGlobalAssessmentReport(GAR)ondisasterrisks,2015,UnitedNationsOfficeforDisasterRiskreduction(UNSDR).

2 Ibid.

Figure 1: Chennai floods, December 2015Source: Vinaya Padmanabhan

India is one of the world’s most flood-prone countries with 113 million people exposed to floods

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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, Majuli3, 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 Anoverlayoffloodinundationmapsandtheurbanareasrevealedthatthreeurbanareas-DibrugarhandJorhatfallveryclosetoBrahmaputra,andSilcharinproximitytoBarak,havealargepopulationlivinginthelowlyingareas.Alongwiththese3cities,Majuliwasincludedsinceitisthelargestriverineislandandanewlyformeddistrictinthestate.

Source: Ajay Katuri

3 MajuliwasdeclaredaTownPanchayatin2016

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Figure 2: Summary table

Dibrugarh Jorhat Silchar Majuli

Demo-graphics

• Populationof1,45,488 people incityandoutgrowths4

• Populationof1,27,000people5incityandoutgrowths

• Populationof1,72,820people6incityandoutgrowths

• Largestriverisland

• Uniquecultureand history

Recentflooding

• Assam Tibet earthquake in 1950changedthegeographyofthe area

• There have been majorfloodsin1966,1972,1973,1977,1978,1984andmorerecentlyin2002 and 20157.

• In2016,theBhogdoibreachedanembankment kilometersfromJorhattown,causingfloodsthat rendered “hundreds” homeless.8

• Facesflashfloodingandlandslides often,mostrecentlyin20189

• 65villagessubmergedin201710

Mainproblems

• Inadequate capacityofDTPdrain

• Slopeofdistrictandheightofriver bank

• Solidwastemanagement

• Unscientificdrains and culverts

• Lackofinterdepartmental coordination

• Lackofskilledstaff

• NoSWMsystem overfilled

• Faceswaterloggingandriverine flooding

• Improper gradientandmissinglinksofdrains

• Solidwastemanagement

• Boundedbyrivers

• Severalbreachesinembankments

• Nascentcityadministration

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

4 Census2011website.Nd.Accessedat:http://www.census2011.co.in/census/city/189-dibrugarh.html.[Accessed06May2017].

5 http://www.census2011.co.in/towns.php6 http://www.census2011.co.in/towns.php7 Baruah,D.1994.Urban History of India: A Case Study.Mittalpublications.8 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/Over-35000-people-hit-by-floods-in-Jorhat/article-

show/53125975.cms?from=mdr9 https://www.firstpost.com/india/north-east-floods-over-four-lakh-affected-by-heavy-rain-landslides-in-as-

sam-manipur-tripura-and-mizoram-4528061.html10 http://silchar.com/majuli-embankment-breached-65-villages-submerged/

India’s average annual economic loss due to disasters is estimated to be $9.8 billion

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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, JorhatAnurbanplannermentionedthatdrainageprojectsmaybeperfect,butimplementationisriddledwithproblems.“Themasonsdowhatevertheywant,”hesaid.Hecitedanexam-plewherea30-footroadwilllooklikealineonthemaporaplan.“Wedon’tknowwhereanythingstartsonamap!Duringexecution,everythinggoeswrong.”“Youcandoasmanystudiesasyouwantbutitneedstocoincidewiththefieldandthegroundreality”.“Practicallyallprojectsfail,”hesaid.

� 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

• OnerespondentfromSilcharsaid,“overtheyears,theroadlevelshavebeenraisedhigherthantheplinthlevelofthehouses.Houseswithlowerplinthlevelsweresub-mergedwith1ftwater,duringheavyforlast3years”.

• GorakhpurinUttarPradeshandSuratinGujarataregoodcounterexamples.InGo-rakhpur,peoplehavestartedbuildinghigherplinths.InSurat,peoplestartedbuildingmorestoriestotheirhousesandchangedtheinternalplanningoftheirhousestokeepgroundfloorfree,savingtheirpropertyduringfloods

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 wasteSource: Vinaya Padmanabhan

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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:

Institutional challenges

Clim

ate

chan

ge

and

DR

R

Data collection No clear

guidelines

Weak institutio

nal and

com

munity

capacity

Lack of integration on Climate and

DRR in urban development

Weak capacity, inadequate finances and manpower; weak capacity of community groups in responding to disasters

Little to no data on spatial variation on

risk; Data held by different

departments

No guidelines incorporation vulnerability concerns

(for instance on how to raise the road

without raising the level)

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”

Figure 5: Institutional challenges

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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

Developingacatchmentareaisoneofthecriticalareasofinterventionforfloodmanage-ment.Somerecommendationsunderthisinclude:• Managing sedimentation: SedimentationhappensallalongthebanksoftheBrahma-

putra.Conductingthesedimentationanalysiswillenablethedepartmentsinsafeguard-ingtheriverliningandbunds.Somerecommendationstowardsthisinclude(i)estimatingtheamountofsiltintheriverthroughacomprehensivestudy,(ii)Studyingthefeasibilityofremovingsiltfromsomeareasand(iii)constructingandmaintainingstructurestomanagingdesiredsedimentation

• Afforestation:Thedevelopmentofthecatchmentareathroughafforestationcanbeconductedby(i)Conductinglanduselandcoverchangedetectionstudies(ii)Identifyingareaswherelargescaledeforestationhastakenplaceand(iii)Identifyingspecificplant/treespeciestoarrestthesoilerosionandimprovingthewaterpercolation

• Upper catchment terrain management:Uppercatchmentterrainmanagement-Onewayofreducingthestormwatercomingintothesetownsistoimprovetheholdingca-pacityofthesoilupstream.Byusingforestationandothersoilconservationtechniques,thepermeabilityofthesoilcanbepositivelymodifiedandcanhelpreducedownstreamthefloodthreat.

• Creating a suitable drainage network: Constructingsmallreservoirs,checkdamsandpondstoroutethefloodwaterwouldinvolve(i)identifyingsuitableareasforstoringaccessrunoff,(ii)conductingfeasibilityofrainwaterstorageathouseholdlevelandpro-vidingincentivesforharvestingtherainwateratinitiallevel,(iii)creatingsuitabledrain-agenetworkandinfrastructuretodivertthefloodwatertothesedesignatedareasand(iv)explorethepossibilitiesofusingthestoredfloodwaterforirrigationandotherusesinsteadofdependingonriverwater

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

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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.

Figure 6: Sedimentation of the Brahmaputra near Dibrugarh

...drainage master plans can help inform various construction and infrastructure development work, ensuring that they are climate resilient, and located in low risk areas.

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Box 5: SWM in Silchar

ThecityofSilchar,wentforthedecentralizedpublicprivatecommunitypartnership(PPCP)Solidwastemanagementmodelatwardlevel.Apre-feasibilitystudyforothercitiestothisendwillenableinunderstandingthemarketpotentialofsuchanintervention.

Forecasting and warning

Strengthening and upgradation of existing flood forecasting system and reviving the non-functional 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.

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Box 6: FLEWS project11

Thefloodforecastingandwarningsystem(FLEWS)developedbyASDMAisasystembywhichfloodinducedhazardscanbeminimizedandprevented.Theproject’ssuccessinitsinitialpilotledtoscalingupofthesamein14districtsinAssam.Thesystemisbuiltoutofthreemajorcomponents–themeteorologicalcomponent,thehydrologicalcomponentandpostfloodidentificationofembankmentbreachesandgeneralmonitoringofembankments.

11 Moreinformationontheprojectcanbefoundat:http://sdmassam.nic.in/pdf/publication/FLEWS.pdf

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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 self-sufficient. 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.

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� 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.

Key takeaways

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 Depart-ment 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.

E: [email protected]

W: actiononclimate.today

www.facebook.com/ActionOnClimate

@act_climate

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