Evaluating the responsiveness of city resilience in Hyderabad

Indian Cities are predicted to support more than 40% of India’s population and more than 75% of the national GDP by the next decade. Urban masses are facing rapidly increasing challenges from numerous natural and human-made pressures such as rapid urbanization, climate change, terrorism, and increased risks from natural hazards. Cities must be able to understand the notion of resilience and be able to adapt and thrive in the face of these various challenges that a city would have to be faced - they must learn how to build resilience in an unpredictable world like today. Armed with this knowledge and understanding, governments, donors, investors, policymakers, and the private sector will be able to develop effective strategies to foster more resilient cities. In the last two years alone, multiple extreme events across India severely affected urban areas such as Chennai, Mumbai, Kochi, and Bhubaneswar. However, considering the global pandemic and one such devastating event to all growing cities across the globe. Besides the initial short-term effects, such disasters have a long-lasting impact on the socio-economic, physical conditions of cities and communities in terms of impacts on urban infrastructure, socio-cultural systems, and the overall quality of life. Considering all the possible perspectives, practicing urban resilience is essential for safeguarding urban investments and thinking about the possible ways for a forward-looking, risk-aware, inclusive, and integrated approach to sustainable urban development. Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the City Resilience Index (CRI) is being developed by Arup. It builds on extensive research undertaken by Arup to establish an accessible, evidence-based definition of urban resilience, which culminated in the publication of the City Resilience Framework (CRF) in April 2014 This provides a holistic articulation of city resilience, structured around four dimensions and 12 goals that are critical for the resilience of our cities. This structure also forms the foundations of the CRI. The CRI will rather measure the performance of a city rather than comparing it with another. It is Unique for each city, It will not deliver an overall score for comparing but will instead provide a common basis for measuring the index of cities, for better dialogue and knowledge sharing between cities, government, and the residents of cities. It is envisaged that the CRI will primarily be used by city governments who are in the best position to gather administrative data, but it can also be used by other interested organizations and individuals (for example, universities, non-governmental organizations, community groups). It is intended that the CRI the process will also provide the means for cities to capture the views of the low-income and vulnerable groups as they normally suffer more severely the impacts of disruptions and failures. This Paper will be keen in evaluating the resilience of Hyderabad city considering the factors and parameters in the city resilience index, by ARUP, given the scenario, the pandemic has paved the way to restricted field surveys and more of desktop analysis