Sustainable and inclusive urban growth are essential in revealing the true benefits of urbanization. To assess cities’ preparedness to tackle the menace of climate change, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (Government of India) along with the National Institute of Urban Affairs launched the "ClimateSmart Cities Assessment Framework" (CSCAF) in February 2019. This assessment is a first-of-its-kind self-assessment framework on climate-relevant parameters with the intent to provide a roadmap for Indian cities towards mainstreaming climate actions within current and future policies, programs, and projects. The ClimateSmart Cities Assessment Framework is trying to institutionalize the uptake of mitigation and adaptation strategies across the Urban Local Bodies in India.

The framework is developed on 5 progressive development levels which provide directions to each city in moving forward as per their state and city development plans to build climate actions. To provide sustained impetus and perspective to the ongoing efforts, Ministry set up a dedicated "Climate Centre for Cities" (C-CUBE) within the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) in 2020 to mainstream climate actions at the local level and provide contextual handholding support to the cities in the form of training and capacity building activities, alliance partnership and development of tools/technology. As part of the assessment, the C-CUBE has networked with more than 80 national and international agencies; developed more than 25 training modules; and more than 6,000 city representatives were trained through 56 virtual city training workshops and theme-specific mentoring sessions. Developed Climate Data Observatory (CDoT), a dynamic dashboard enabling cities to monitor and compare their progress over the years for making informed decisions making. Additionally, a board game called “CLAP NOW” was developed to enable informed decisions.

The game has been designed to serve as a capacity building tool to help participants identify appropriate climate actions for the cities based on a multi-criteria decision analysis.