Urban Flood Resilience Assessment Framework for Inland Areas – A Case of Roorkee City, Uttarakhand

Abstract

The discourse on urban flood resilience and the notions associated with the word has grown enormously and has been discovered to be in staggering form. The review of UFRA literature reveals a prevalence of frameworks analysing isolated or clustered urban elements rather than a comprehensive framework for assessing flood resilience. Academic interest in comprehending flood resilience concepts and their evaluation is growing with increasing frequency and severity of disaster due to climate change (CC). This study introduces and proposes a detailed methodological framework for the flood resilience assessment of urban inland areas. The UFRA process considering urban elements, methods, tools and techniques, and challenges in achieving resilience and provides guidelines for constructing advanced resilience assessment frameworks. Urban areas act as a system based on the interrelationships among various major dimensions, sub-dimensions and indicators. One needs to understand how resilient they are in their vicinities. The major aim is to provide a detailed methodological process involved in assessment process to fill the research gap. Results identified that dimensions and indicators involved in preparedness, response and recovery phase covered in the assessment and ranking process for the wards. Despite a lack of emphasis on resilience assessment methods and approaches favouring conceptual framework and factors, it is observed that these themes and criteria’s are emerging in the developing scenario to solve the resilience concepts. The research may serve as a springboard for people's and policymakers' concerns about climate change and its effects, infrastructure development to improve the health and social well-being of societies, and a desire to learn more about resolving urban flooding problems in order to enhance flood management concepts pertaining to urban resilience and its history. Hence, a comprehensive list of dimension, sub-dimensions and indicators, concerning urban flood resilience with varying weights according to contexts is recommended, leading to the development of the urban flood resilient assessment tool and modifying the existing tools to reflect better the holistic understanding of sustainable and resilient cities/areas.