Mapping climatic and biological disasters in India: Study of spatial and temporal patterns and lessons for strengthening resilience

Spatio-temporal mapping of climatic and biological disaster outbreak in India has been undertaken using historical data and scientific tools to explore options to support for relief, recovery, resilience, and adaptation through integration with existing development programmes. Floods, Droughts, Cyclones, Heat Waves and Cold Waves, Dengue, JE and COVID-19 have been considered, given their widespread occurrences and impacts in India. In addition, multi-hazard assessments are carried out for combined climatic, combined biological and combined climatic and biological disasters. In this report, data is compiled from hand-scanned government documents, international reports on disaster and disease outbreaks and scientific literature analysis. Three time-periods have been selected: pre-HFA (1995-2005), HFA (2005- 2015) and post-HFA (i.e., Sendai period 2015-2030).

The study comes up with a number of valuable lessons and recommendations for strengthening disaster reduction system and resilience in India through interventions related to policy, institutional, programmatic/ schemes and financial allocations. The study presents key findings and lessons that have a bearing on overall implementation of disaster management system in India vis-à-vis changing risk patterns due to progress/changes in development, urbanisation and environmental health over the last 25 years (91995-2020).