IMPACT OF URBAN FLOODS ON SLUM REDEVELOPMENT

CASE OF BHOPAL
[1]Manju Yadav, [2] K.K. Dhote, [3] Praveen Yadav
[1]Asst. Professor, SPA, Bhopal
[2] Professor, MANIT, Bhopal
[3] Practicing Architect -Gurgaon
[1]8120634084, manjuarck@gmail.com; [2] 09406518194, kkdhote@gmail.com, [3] 09971062444,
praveenarck@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT
The urban poor especially living in slums depend upon the informal sector for their
livelihood as they have limited access to formal occupations which compels them to locate into
locations which are dangerous and vulnerable to natural disasters. These areas are often near water
bodies, marshy lands and low lying areas. It is a proven fact that urban poor is more vulnerable to
storm and floods which affect their living badly. Urban floods will also bring other stresses like
reduction in fresh water availability, ground water contamination and water borne diseases. Which
indirectly creates pressure on government bodies. These factor of occupying vulnerable zone prone
to natural disaster poses challenge for rehabilitation of slums. How to prepare these slums for
disaster, what are the precautionary measures and how disasters can be avoided is the challenge
before planners. The present paper aims at urban floods occurring in slum areas which can affect
the life of urban poor and cause loss of lives and property.

Keywords – Urban Poor, Slum Rehabilitation, Settlements, Urban floods, Natural disaster

1. URBAN FLOODS
There has been an increasing trend of urban flood disasters in India over the past several years
whereby major cities in India have been severely affected. The most notable amongst them are
Hyderabad in 2000, Ahmedabad in 2001, Delhi in 2002 and 2003, Chennai in 2004, Mumbai in
2005, Surat in 2006, Kolkata in 2007, Jamshedpur in 2008, Delhi in 2009 and Guwahati and Delhi
in 2010. The most recent devastating ones were Srinagar in 2014 and Chennai in 2015. (Source-
Report- Ministry of Urban development- Govt. of India). It is a well-established fact that the poor

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section of society is more affected in such conditions as they are deprived of facility to mitigate
the situation. The location of slums, crowding and inadequate infrastructure further worsen the
situation. Slum rehabilitation programs are taking place in a big way but still it will take next 20-
25 years to streamline the situation.

1.1 Urban flood causes in India

Source: Urban floods in Bangalore and Chennai: risk management challenges and lessons for
sustainable urban ecology – by Anil K. Gupta* and Sreeja S. Nair

1.2 Vulnerability of Urban Poor towards Urban Floods

Slums which works as shock absorbers of cities, provides space for the lower and deprived
section of the society. This slums are the most vulnerable sections not only in terms of lack of civic
services but also prone to natural disaster. Urban flood has multiple effects on human society, these
can be primary effects like causalities and property loss, secondary effects like contamination of
water, loss of entire harvest and spread of water borne diseases or tertiary effects like economic
hardship, loss of tourism, food shortage, rebuilding costs, price increase etc.

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 It is observed that in case of heavy rainfall the low lying areas, areas on the periphery of
water bodies and settlements near dumping ground are severely affected. The poor infrastructure,
housing condition and capability to tackle natural disaster makes the inhabitants more vulnerable
towards any natural disaster. As the slum dwellers do not have proper infrastructure for storm-
water drainage, road network for evacuation and rescue operation, Lack of sanitation facilities
leads to poor hygiene and contaminates the drinking water in a way the overall environmental is
deteriorated. Poor economic conditions and loss of wages worsen the situation. Hence it is the
demand of the time to find solutions which can be executed locally by the residents.

1.3 Reasons of Urban Floods – The main reason of urban floods is failure of drainage system
during heavy rains. The physiographic features are now a days either neglected or
encroached upon which in due course reduces the permeability of the surface, obstructs
natural drainage, improper waste collection leads to choking of drains and during heavy rains
these drainage are inadequate. Slums located near water channel retards the water flow in
drains are they themselves fall victim to urban floods.

Figure -2

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Figure 2: Above image showing that when proper flood plain was left around the stream it was
flowing freely but construction in the flood plain i.e. encroachments leads to flooding

2. CASE : BHOPAL (MADHYA PRADESH)

Bhopal, is a capital city of Madhya Pradesh it is a part of Malwa plateau and its topography is
generally undulating. Bhopal lies in a hilly terrain which have slopes towards north and south–
east direction. On the south –west and north –west portion, there are many hillocks with different
altitude. Bhopal has highest elevation point of 560 meters with the undulating topography with
hilly terrain that hops in quick drainage of surface water. In the rainy season water passes quickly
through the drains and joins either in lakes or low-lying areas. The main rock types is the Deccan
trap and basalt that holds soil up to few inches and allow growing vegetation. The mapping of
slopes gives idea about location of escarpments and major hills near water body of the city. Hills
are major recreational areas of the city where many escarpments are encroached by the informal
settlements mainly slums.

2.1 Hydrology of Bhopal

Hydrology of Bhopal is falling within the Betwa river Basin, which is a tributary of Yamuna River
system. Kolans River drains into the upper lake and Kaliasot River, which is its outlet, later
becomes the tributary of the river betwa. Patra Nallha receives the overflow of Lower Lake which
drains the central and northern parts of the city (Bhopal Development Plan, 1991) In general,
drainage pattern in the area is dendritic (tree like branching) in the plains and sub-parallel in the
hill ranges, controlled by joints. At places, drainage is straight and is mostly controlled by joints.
These water system is disturbed and vanished in major urban locality.

2.2 Occurrence of floods in previous years

Rainfall Pattern Bhopal has well distributed moderate rainfall pattern with average annual rainfall
of 1260 mm. The city has received its 92 percent of the total rainfall from southwest monsoon. It
has record of heavy rainfall has records of flood, in the year 1973, 2006 and recently in 2016.

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2.3 Affected areas

In the year 2016 mainly areas of Ashoka garden, Nehru nagar, Shahpura and Shabri nagar
were the most affected. Jail road, new market road and MP Nagar and some other areas had faced
the traffic jam. Roads witnessed knee-length water as resident complained of poor drainage system
while flooded roads and ditches caused chaos everywhere.

Water has entered many houses in low-lying slum areas within the city. People residing in
Banganga suffered a lot due to poor drainage and sewerage network systems. This has become a
routine tiresome experience every-year as we struggle to overcome flood effects.

2.4 Agencies working for URBAN FLOODS in Bhopal

The State of Madhya Pradesh is vulnerable to natural disasters owning to its unique geo -
climatic features. The major natural hazards for the State are earthquake, floods, drought, fire, etc.
The State is also vulnerable to manmade disaster. The State has witnessed a great manmade and
natural disasters. These disasters result in loss of life and property – public and private – and disrupt
economic activity, besides causing immense misery and hardship to the affected population.

Earlier disasters were mainly natural disturbance in environment but recent incidents of disasters
are purely the outcome of manmade wrong practices. Looking towards the vulnerability it's very
important to address all in a holistic manner for sustainable development. Source: NDMA –
National Disaster Management Authority- Government of India - Madhya Pradesh - Official
website - http://mpsdma.nic.in/

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 3. IMPACTS OF URBAN FLOODING
Urban floods affects the cityscape spatially as well as it had negative impact on social fabric
of the society. The different aspect of implication of urban floods are listed below in figure-3

Sr. No. Factors Implications

1 Social
 The Loss of lives,
 damage to property,
 psychological stress,
 high risk of health mental and physical health due
stress and Waterborne diseases and,
 Injuries.

2 Environment Loss of aquatic biodiversity, contamination of ground

Impacts
water, pollution of soil and water courses, damage of crops,
vegetation cover and depended biodiversity

3 Economic Loss of livelihood and property, loss of transportation

Impacts
facilities which leads to disturbance of material base
(industrial), land base (Agriculture) work areas, loss of
demand and supply cycle.

Physical Transportation system (road, rail) Infrastructure

Infrastructure
services – water supply, electricity, telecommunication.
Impacts

Figure-3

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 4. METHODOLOGY
4.1 Qualitative and Quantitative analysis
Following is the Bases for adopting the proposed methodology

Human factors parameters planning factors

Health Land form
Employment Land use
Education Pattern
Economic condition Physical infrastructure
Quality of life Social infrastructure
Mental health Accessibility
Note: As any settlements involves both spatial and human factors. Lack of human factors
make any population, socially vulnerable and lack of planning factors like suitable landform for
construction, suitable land use, pattern such that it supports minimum level of accessibility, light
and ventilation etc. Physical infrastructure like water supply and sanitation, social infrastructure
parks, community halls etc. can create not only dissatisfaction but a threat to precious life.
Among all the natural hazards, affecting the State of Madhya Pradesh, floods are most
frequent and devastating. In other words, the state is highly prone to flood hazard. As per the data
available from the Revenue Department, the state has faced severe floods in the year of 1982,
1983, 1984, 1986, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2012. It was also observed that
more than 80% of the annual rainfall is concentrated over a short monsoon period of 3 months.
This leads to heavy siltation, flash floods and poor discharge of flood waters,

Source: NDMA –National Disaster Management Authority- Government of India - Madhya

Pradesh - Official website - http://mpsdma.nic.in/

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4.2 Macro level Map- Bhopal (showing flood affected area in 2006)

Source: NDMA- Govt. of India (Madhya Pradesh)

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 5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The problem of slum is multidimensional which includes physical, environmental, social and
economic issues. Vulnerability measurements should include all the dimensions appropriately. The
proposals should develop a mechanism which must lead to check the degree of flood vulnerability
specifically in selected slum areas.
The Urban local bodies (ULBs) and other government bodies have conducted different
programmes for up gradation of slums and urban poor. Irrespective of the context and variations
in nature of problems faced by them. Vulnerability analysis will help in identifying the character
and nature of problem, magnitude and root cause of the problem. One size does not fit for all.
Analysis or an index would help in prioritization of slums to be selected for interventions with
specific focus on identified problems.

The mitigation measures can be categorized as long term and short term at different Macro,
and Micro level. The various stakeholders include Planners, Administrators, Technocrats, Social
Leaders and community itself should work together to handle flood situation.

References

1. Anil K. Gupta and Sreeja S. Nair -Urban floods in Bangalore and Chennai: risk management
challenges and lessons for sustainable urban ecology
2. Bhopal Development Plan- 1991
3. NDMA (National disaster management authority) - Govt. of India (Madhya Pradesh) Official
website - http://mpsdma.nic.in/
4. Susan L. Cutter, Bryan J. Boruff, W. Lynn Shirley –University of South Carolina – Social
Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards
5. Reshma Raskar Phule, Deepankar Chudhary – Sardar patel college of engineering, IIT Bombay
, “ Vulnerability mapping of disaster assessment using ArcGIS tools and techniques for
Mumbai city
6. Louis G.Zachos, Charles T.Swann (March 2016) – Flood vulnerability indices and emergency
management planning in the Yazoo Basin, Mississippi

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