June 26, 2024 (Wednesday, 16:00 -17:00 PM JST)
About the Webinar
India is experiencing rapid urbanisation, and consequently impact of climate change on hydroclimatic and other climatic risk and vulnerability in urban areas is escalating rapidly. The smart city of Patna, the capital of Bihar state, is located in the central part of the Gangetic plains. The city is amongst the oldest surviving urban centres in the world, with a continuous recorded history dating back to the fifth century BC. The city (population 2.5 million) is one of the fastest growing urban centres in India. It falls in the risk zone of floods and the problem is aggravated in monsoon season.
In this environment, with already existing pressures on infrastructures, climate change puts further stress on its management. Climate change is already having impacts on temperature and precipitation. Enticing on the theories of ‘resilience building as development’ and in-depth examines of rolling development initiatives in the smart city of India, this study explores the factors that promote or hamper successful resilience building action for the hydroclimatic risk and vulnerability in the city. Based on the interviews, primary documents, direct opinion, and, developmentally oriented project studies that address the city’s most urgent hydroclimatic risks in sewage, drainage and solid waste management, it recommends a contingent resilience building approach as most-suited to such resource-constrained smart city of India. Such an approach has the ability to overcome intrinsic local resource constraints, institutional limitations, while increasing the likelihood of adoption of resilience building-oriented projects. This study finds that these basic resilience-building measures, which are needed to address the city’s development, management, risk, and vulnerability concerns, are necessary as a stepping-stone to transformative pathways for addressing hydroclimatic risk uncertainties for sustainable and resilient smart city development.
About the Speaker
Dr. Shailendra K. Mandal is an architect and city planner, presently working as an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture and Planning, National Institute of Technology (NIT) Patna, Bihar, India. He has completed his Bachelor of Architecture degree course from Bihar College of Engineering (Presently National Institute of Technology Patna), Patna University in 2002 and Master of City Planning from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2005 and PhD from NIT Patna in 2018. He has over eighteen years of teaching and research experience and more than two years of industry experience. He has done number of research and consultancy projects with organisations like UNICEF, Ministry of Housing and Poverty Alleviations, Ministry of Railways, NOAA, USA and GIZ.
His professional and academic works focus in the discourse of climate change, climate change adaptation, urban resilience and sustainability, envi- ronment and ecology, coastal resiliency and sustainable urban planning, es- pecially on how the locally embedded adaptation planning can be a driver to the transformation process of urban resiliency and sustainability. He has been awarded Fulbright Fellowship to work on ‘Climate Change Adap- tation and Urban Resilience’ at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA in the year 2013-14. He is an expert reviewer of first and second order draft, work- ing group II and III contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). He has been nominated by the Indian Government for the Scoping Meeting of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities. He has travelled extensively around the world related to his research work and scientific paper presentations. He has presented his research work in all the six Habitable Continents of our planet.
About the NERPS Webinar Series
The Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) at Hiroshima University in Japan is hosting a series of webinars on the relationship between peace and sustainability in the context of environmental, socio-political, economic, and technological transformations. This series is situated within the urgent need to deal with the implications of global change, including the COVID-19 pandemic, for peace and sustainability. The webinar sessions serve as a platform for rethinking and updating the current discourse on peace and sustainability amidst these global challenges and transformations. Leading experts will discuss the role of resources, digital technologies, migration, governance, and education in peacebuilding, conflict mitigation, humanitarian aid, and capacity-building, among other components that contribute to the achievement of the Sustainability Development Goals, particularly that of Goal 16 on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. Check out our previous webinars here.
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