Enhancing urban resilience against elevation-driven precipitation risks in Indian smart cities

Abstract

Precipitation variability across urban regions in changing climate influences the regional hydrology, increasing flood challenges, and impacts the water availability patterns. In this study, we provide a risk assessment for Indian smart cities with variations in the precipitation amount. In order to quantify the inter-relationship between elevation and precipitation variability using the entropy theory at multiple scales across the homogeneous precipitation zones of India. The study considered precipitation datasets to compute hazards based on the 95th percentile precipitation amounts and their associated inter-annual precipitation variability. Further, in order to assess the risk for smart cities, we correlate hazard with vulnerability to elevation, vulnerable infrastructure, and exposure to population and urban economy. The southern peninsular region observed a maximum value of SVIME in January (0.553) and in the winter season (0.398) for monthly and seasonal scales, respectively. The study revealed that cities at lower elevations and near coastal regions across the Southern Peninsular, North West, and West Central observed extreme risk due to the inconsistencies in the extreme precipitation. Chennai, Kavaratti, and Kochi cities in the southern peninsular region observed extreme risk among all the cities annually. The study observed inverse relationships between inter-annual precipitation amount variability and elevation. Therefore, the study suggests the implementation of an integrated climate-adaptive infrastructure plan into city expansion projects. This study further assists scientists, researchers, and stakeholders in minimizing the risk associated with regional water resources planning and management and climate extremes. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.