BHUBANESWAR: Union minister of state for Housing and Urban Affairs Tokhan Sahu unveiled ‘Bhubaneswar Climate Digital Twin’, billed as the country’s first interactive climate risk platform for citizens, at the 19th Urban Mobility India Conference and Expo 2026 on Friday.
Developed by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) with technical backing from GIZ India under MoHUA’s Sustainable Urban Mobility - Air Quality, Climate Action and Accessibility (SUM-ACA) project and built by Innpact Solutions, the platform creates a data-driven picture of the city’s climate risks, helping urban planners and civic authorities understand environmental problems, identify vulnerable locations and plan interventions.
BMC officials said the open-access portal integrates satellite imagery, weather data and advanced computer modelling to map three critical environmental hazards which include heat stress, urban flooding and air pollution, across 67 wards of the city, apart from road-safety ratings. The digital model covers roughly 2.77 lakh buildings, 2,000 km of roads and 2,100 public facilities.
The platform tracks Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) to measure ‘felt heat’ rather than raw air temperatures. Designed for accessibility, the portal requires no login and features a built-in AI assistant to answer queries in plain language, BMC officials said. They added that citizens can simply open climate.bmc.gov.in on any smartphone, tablet or computer.
The platform has identified specific pockets across the city that face severe, recurring environmental pressures. As per its findings, During the recent summer, extreme felt-heat hotspots peaked at the Airport Region (46.0°C), Dhirikuti Sahi and IDCO Colony (45.8°C), Paikarapur (45.6°C) and Salia Sahi (45.4°C), while areas like Sikharchandi Vihar, Rail Kunj Complex, Jagannath Nagar, Saheed Nagar and Adimata Colony suffer from severe nighttime heat retention.
For urban flooding, the historical satellite records pinpointed vulnerable residential clusters including Lingaraj Vihar, Ananta Vihar, Badagada Brit Colony, Paika Nagar and Kolathia where over 1,500 buildings experienced inundation nearly 10 times in last 10 years. Besides, winter air-quality mapping has flagged neighborhoods such as Sriram Nagar, Samantarapur, Kapileswar, Basisthanagar and Brahmeswar Patna near AQI 230, with around 345 educational institutions experiencing poor air quality.
Mayor Sulochana Das said, “The platform empowers residents to directly report localised issues like waterlogging, open waste burning and construction dust by uploading photos with geotags. By searching for their house, school, market or street, users can instantly view live and historical data regarding their area’s heat stress, air quality and flood risks.”
BMC commissioner Chanchal Rana said the platform allows civic authorities to direct resources precisely where vulnerability is highest.
