Addressing flooding in the city of Surat beyond its boundaries

This paper describes the flood risks faced by Surat, one of India’s most successful and also most flood-prone cities. The paper  reviews measures being taken to reduce flood risks and how climate change is likely to affect such risks. It suggests that part of the city’s response needs to be a greater ability to live with floods while minimising the costs these usually bring in terms of loss of life, damage to homes and disruption to businesses.

The authors propose the following:

• Land use planning and the enforcement of development rules based on risk categorization, as well as upgrading housing and other private infrastructure to withstand floods is important.
• Detailed, publicly available data on risks can help discourage growth in high-risk zones such as tidal creeks and beaches.
• There is a need to explore group insurance or city level insurance that could be financed by a surcharge on house tax.
• Early warning needs to be improved to increase respite time, also better-informed community level response contingency planning to minimise damage and loss.
• City dwellers need to be trained to take effective individual and collective action to manage life with minimal disruption.
• Monsoon preparations need to include updating the database of the elderly, infirm and persons requiring special care, and provision for effective two-way communication.
• Short-term measures need to be combined with longer-term strategies that may require more investment and preparation, such as a balloon barrage to better control the release of water from the Ukai dam.
• Slum rehabilitation programmes should incorporate features to enable living with floods, such as improved sanitation and waste management systems.
• Detailed flood risk assessment followed by the designing of suitable structures that incorporate flood protection features may be included during the planning stages.
• The urban community development department of Surat’s municipal council should have a strong role in enabling the slum communities to adapt to the floods.

Environment & Urbanization, Vol. 25, No. 2, Pages 429-441, October 2013. This document is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported licence.