Social Inclusivity: A Case Study on Community Resilience on Kerala Flood-2018

Urban resilience for any city is a gap to be fully understood and assimilated in urban planning. Globalisation and rapid urbanisation in recent years have led to newer challenges as higher densities, greater demand for infrastructure, resources, environmental and man-made hazards are on the increase. Cities are trying to cope up with the rising needs through various planning techniques and modern applications and planning models.

However, each city’s landscape is different and many a time, these approaches might not adhere appropriately to every aspect of a city. One of the worst situations where the resilience of a city would be truly realized, is when disaster strikes. The flood in Kerala State in August 2018 is one such example where researchers can study a lot.

Not only the fact of ‘coping up to the maximum damage possible’, but it is also ‘how fast human lives can be brought back to their normal stable level’. Once pre-disaster state is achieved, the need to improve services or to continue as usual is another question to be resolved. In most cases, the governmental and other agencies would strive to attain the lowest acceptable condition. However, it is most appreciated if the resilience exceeds the original level with new approaches to planning, design and infrastructural capabilities so that the disaster, even if it strikes again will affect the damage prevention better. The ability of the city or the extent of resilience shown by Kerala is strong, especially when compared to similar scale disasters that have struck in India and even other parts of the world. The paper tries to study and evaluate these factors that lead to faster resilience of Kerala’s state to model a flexible and more effective urban resilient planning approach.