While digital means are increasingly used to assist in managing cities, an untapped potential lies in using them to facilitate participatory local level policy making and implementation to catapult climate actions that are urgently needed. This holds special significance in Indian cities that face resource and capacity constraints. Data driven decision-making platforms can assist in augmenting the capacity of local actors and facilitate forward looking and collaborative climate actions. India is risk-prone, rapidly urbanizing and witnessing speedy adoption of digital technologies by its young population. The combination of an urbanizing country and a young population that is riding the digital wave presents a unique opportunity to strengthen transformative participatory climate action, particularly in medium and small cities. To that end, this project intends to leverage and build on existing urban data platforms such as ICCC (under the smart city programme) to facilitate transformative and participatory climate action. This project will assist urban local bodies in India in working effectively with all stakeholders (particularly the civil society) to gather and analyse data needed for comprehensive policy making and jointly implement transformative climate actions. It aims to showcase a science based participatory planning framework for data driven decision making that can inspire cities across the globe. Modality: We aim to start by simultaneously working on understanding the two ends of the climate action spectrum: starting the global, regional and national mapping of climate impacts relevant to Visakhapatnam, we want to work in tandem with the identified stakeholders to understand what these impacts mean at the local level, how they can be addressed and where are the gaps particularly in terms of actor’s capacities to take up climate action. To augment stakeholders’ capacities, a ‘needs assessment’ will be carried out to identify sectoral focus areas and understand the operational, technical and institutional capacity needs of the target groups through questionnaires and stakeholder consultations. A pilot testing of use cases with the ICCC on the identified sectoral themes will be done in collaboration with multiple stakeholders. This would further help in identifying the entry points for building Vishakhapatnam’s ICCC into an ‘Urban Observatory’ for informed resilience building. To institutionalise the participatory data-driven decision-making approach, capacity-building exercises will be carried out through workshops and training programmes for SRU, civil society actors and other identified stakeholders. For scaling up the learning from Visakhapatnam, consultation workshops (including tools such as mind mapping, role play and pathway visualization exercises) with 10 other Indian cities will be conducted. This can help in better understanding the replicability of the project across other cities in India. Based on the consultation, it will develop capacity building in form of training modules and policy briefs for various stakeholders. Key outputs: A range of activities including the capacity building of the local stakeholders towards setting up sustainable data collection and sharing mechanisms that facilitate community engagement, enhance last mile connectivity and facilitate real-time feedback will be undertaken. Envisaged key outputs are: 1. Development of participatory planning framework for data driven decision making 2. Setting up of Visakhapatnam Living Lab on climate action 3. Capacity Building and outreach for sustainability and upscaling