Climate (Un)smart? Case Study of Smart City Projects in Surat, India

Abstract

Indian cities face critical challenges in urban infrastructures with the growing population. It has been reported that urban areas have significantly contributed to increased carbon emissions. India’s NDC goals are pursuing efforts to reduce carbon emission aligned to the Paris Agreement that includes the smart city as a mitigation initiative for achieving sustainable development and making climate-resilient cities. Surat city, Gujarat, India, has been selected as a case example to understand the interlinkages between climate resiliency and smart city action. Surat city is exposed to multiple climate risks: flood, heat, sea-level rise, erosion, and biodiversity, and about seventeen diverse organizations are working on adaptation and mitigation measures at the multilateral level. However, there have been limited studies available finding inter-relationship between smartness and resilience at the city level. This chapter explores the framework, methods, approaches, and model for finding solutions for making climate-resilient smart cities. The analysis is broadly undertaken into three steps: developing a conceptual smart city resilience framework, content analysis, and Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP). The conceptual smart city resilience framework includes a) four dimensions (criteria) b) fifteen resilience indicators (sub-criteria). Based on content analysis, fifteen identified resilience indicators were mapped with four dimensions to assess city climate adaptation and mitigation policies. The key thrust areas were measured through the triangulation approach using the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to establish the weights among different indicators for the study. The assessment shows city-focused is more on economic and infrastructure measures. The city climate policy design was set back in terms of targets due to a lack of transparency and a structural review mechanism. The results show key concerns in Surat city are governance, institution, technical learning and information technology, planning system, funding and awareness, and community support system. The outcome suggests that Surat city requires a bottom-up approach in decision planning for addressing key concerns. The proposed research study briefly explained the approach/method/model: Transdisciplinary Approach, Carbon-Centered Comprehensive (3Cs), Knowledge-based solution, Carbon Removal (CR), and Carbon Banking System, Community Energy Systems for managing major concerns and critical challenges of the Indian smart city.