Sithara Ravikumar

Thesis/DRP/Capstone Project

An increase in population owing to the growth potential in a city leads to haphazard urbanization, thus impacting the parameters affecting the overall quality of life in Indian cities. Population rise leads to an underlying pressure on the existing water resources. The ever-changing climate results in extreme environmental events such as floods and heatwaves thus, the need to address the same while respecting the existing water system and ensuring that they are resilient becomes inevitable. Lastly, our ecological systems are the least revered owing to high quotients of urbanization Thereby it becomes crucial to mainstream a water sensitive urban planning approach that can alleviate these complexities for secondary Indian cities. Primarily, Statutory provisions becomes a vital tool as it aids in the implementation of urban development and planning of a city. Thus, the combination of effective visualization tools and statutory provisions will help the stakeholders take more informed planning and implementation decisions. Thereby, the principal intent of this research proposal is to accentuate water-sensitive planning for the case city selected (Bhuj in this case) through the review of statutory provisions and develop a MS Excel Based Toolkit that will spatially assess how water-sensitive the city is. This research shall contribute towards the larger project titled ‘Water4Change’ – a collaboration between DST (Government of India) and the Dutch Research Council.