Authors

• Rohit Magotra, Deputy Director, Moumita Shaw, Research Analyst, Jyoti Parikh, Professor, Ajit Tyagi, Professor and Yashi Sharma, Research Assistant, Integrated Research & Action for Development (IRADe)

The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) is highly vulnerable to natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and landslides due to its geo-environmental settings. Urbanisation is exerting additional environmental stress and amplifies the impact of natural disasters. Besides poor legal enforcement of regulations, inadequate infrastructural services also increase the vulnerability of socially and economically marginalised populations. The IHR is also expected to experience severe impacts of climate change in the future. Therefore, the need of the hour is to assess and understand the status of vulnerability of Himalayan cities to further devise strategies and plans to make them disaster resilient. A Rapid Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) framework, based on parameters such as topography, disaster trends, climate scenarios and projections, the status of infrastructure and governance, has been used to assess disaster vulnerability of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) city Shillong, Meghalaya. The analysis reveals that the city is prone to various hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, flash floods and thunderstorms/lightning, and most of these are climate-induced hazards. The paper also provides certain recommendations for enhancing the disaster resilience of the city, in terms of development and provision of the basic physical and socio-economic infrastructure for the vulnerable population, while adapting to indigenous hazard management mechanisms, strengthening of the governance and administrative structure of the city.