The India-led climate adaptation initiative, Coalition for Disaster Resilience Infrastructure (CDRI), advocates making modern infrastructure projects such as highways, powerlines, communication lines and housing disaster-proof in the age of climate change-induced regular extreme weather events. CDRI showcases India’s rising leadership role in climate action and has 39 countries and seven international agencies as members.
Amit Prothi, Director General of CDRI talks to Jitendra Choubey on the challenges to make people understand the large financial risks associated with natural disasters and how an inclusive and integrated approach can address the challenges. The upcoming CDRI conference, the International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (ICDRI) 2024, is another effort to strengthen the global discourse on disaster and climate resilient infrastructure. Excerpts:
How is disaster resilience infrastructure different from other standard infrastructure?
When our infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power, telecommunication and others fail during extreme climatic events such as cyclones, floods, heatwaves, etc., we say these are not resilient. When we talk about disaster resilient infrastructure (DRI), we try to say, ‘How do we build roads that don’t get washed away by floods? How do we build houses that don’t fall down during an earthquake? How do we build our telecommunication systems that don’t get damaged during a cyclone?’ Most conventional infrastructures are designed to serve the standard model. But changing climatic patterns such as enhanced intensity of cyclonic frequency and sudden floods patterns are contributing to the failure of infrastructure.
For example, in Odisha, due to climate change we are noticing that wind speeds are getting stronger in some parts. So, we are looking at the state’s power infrastructure. We did a study to understand its weak points. If the wind speed exceeds a certain threshold or are there weak points that can cause failure to that power system, we propose plans to strengthen it.
Has CDRI conducted any analysis of the country’s current state of infrastructure? Do we have any examples in the country where disaster resilient infrastructure (DRI) has been developed?
We will be coming out with a study on telecommunications in the next few months in which we are looking into five states, including Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, in collaboration with states and the Central government.