Assessing community resilience to climate-related disasters in Chennai, India

This article compares the resilience of two communities in Chennai, India, to climate-related disasters. The selected communities have similar exposure to natural hazards (cyclones and river-based floods due to their close proximity to the sea. Both areas are predominantly residential. Results from a household survey, assessing the physical, social and economic resilience of individuals through a Climate-related Disaster Community Resilience Framework (CDCRF), reveal that people living in the vicinity of rivers and canals are at higher risk from impacts (damages on house, diseases) of floods compared to others. However, despite their experience to past flood-related disasters, they have not been able to enhance their coping capacity due to their limited adaptive capacity. Thus, their resilience is limited to absorb, manage and bounce back future climate-related disasters (particularly floods). In collaboration with other stakeholders, mainly the Corporation of Chennai (Municipality), community-driven participatory solutions are concluded to have beneficial effect in enhancing the resilience of communities to climate-related disasters.