Weather extremes and street life in India—Implications of Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping as a new tool for semi-quantitative impact assessment and ranking of adaptation measures

The potential impacts of progressing climate change are alarming. Some adverse consequences are now unavoidable and adaptation measures are increasingly needful. This poses enormous challenges for emerging megacities in the Global South, which barely manage in current weather conditions. This paper introduces Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping as a new tool for structured, semi-quantitative assessments of climate change impacts and adaptation measures.Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping is used to evaluate differences in sensitivities to heatwaves and rainstorms across socio-economic groups and for the ranking of useful adaptation options, based on 188 individual interviews to the impacts of extreme weather events in Hyderabad, India. The results of this multi-stakeholder assessment indicate that rainstorms affect low-income residents more than heatwaves, while the opposite is true for medium-income respondents. The latter are also less seriously affected by extreme weather in general. Profession, though, not income determines the kind of impact that people feel most affected by. Individual characteristics like age and gender do not significantly explain differences in the data, but religion does. This is because, in Hyderabad, Muslims live in the older, less serviced and more affected parts of the city. However, semi-quantitative scenario analyses suggest that, under future climate change, many parts of the city will become increasingly exposed to the effects of extreme weather. Planned investments in urban infrastructure will be seriously challenged by climate change and preventive adaptation measures are urgently needed to at least maintain the current level of quality of life. Investments in the health infrastructure appear to be most effective in reducing the impact of heatwaves and investments in the traffic infrastructure most effective in reducing the impact of rainstorms. However, looking at heat and rain events together—which is realistic as they are both projected to increase and often occur in the same year—reveals that investments in water infrastructure and management have greatest potential to reduce impacts across all localities and on all social groups, particularly the lower-income classes. This is because first-order impacts caused by inadequate water infrastructure often give rise to second- or third-order impacts. Addressing the root cause is the most effective way to break cause-and-effect chains and prevent proliferation of negative consequences. Similar studies are suggested in other cities in order to support adaptation mainstreaming in complex urban environments. Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping proved a useful, semi-quantitative tool for climate change impact and adaptation assessments.     

Urban–agricultural water appropriation: the Hyderabad, India case

With the urbanisation drive comes steady growth in urban water demand. Although in the past this new demand could often be met by tapping unclaimed water sources, this option is increasingly untenable in many regions where little if any unclaimed water remains. The result is that urban water capture, and the appropriation of associated physical and institutional infrastructure, now often implies conflict with other existing uses and users. While the urbanisation process has been studied in great depth, the processes and, critically, impacts of urban water capture and appropriation are not well researched or understood. This paper undertakes a critical examination of the specific case of Hyderabad, one of India's fastest growing cities, to shed light more generally on the process of water capture by cities and the resultant impacts on pre-existing claims, particularly agriculture. It does this by examining the history and institutional response to Hyderabad's urban–rural water contest; how the results of that contest are reflected in surface and groundwater hydrology; and the eventual impacts on agriculture. The findings show that the magnitude, and sometimes even direction, of impact from urban water transfer vary in space and time and depend on location-specific rainfall patterns, the nature of existing water infrastructure and institutions, and farmers' adaptive capacities and options, notably recourse to groundwater. Broader consideration of the specific findings provides insights into policy mechanisms to reduce the possible negative impacts from the global, and seemingly inexorable, flow of water to the world's growing cities.     

Texture-based identification of urban slums in Hyderabad, India using remote sensing data

This paper outlines a methodology to identify informal settlements out of high resolution satellite imagery using the concept of lacunarity. Principal component analysis and line detection algorithms were applied alternatively to obtain a high resolution binary representation of the city of Hyderabad, India and used to calculate lacunarity values over a 60 × 60 m grid. A number of ground truthing areas were used to classify the resulting datasets and to identify lacunarity ranges which are typical for settlement types that combine high density housing and small dwelling size - features characteristic for urban slums in India. It was discovered that the line detection algorithm is advantageous over principal component analysis in providing suitable binary datasets for lacunarity analysis as it is less sensitive to spectral variability within mosaicked imagery. The resulting slum location map constitutes an efficient tool in identifying particularly overcrowded areas of the city and can be used as a reliable source in vulnerability and resilience assessments at a later stage. The proposed methodology allows for rapid analysis and comparison of multi-temporal data and can be applied on many developing urban agglomerations around the world.     

Making of high‐tech Hyderabad: Mapping neoliberal networks and splintering effects

Over the past few decades, cities and city regions have become the core of the global economy. Regional governments are increasingly drafting city development policies and implementing them through various visioning documents with the aim of making cities more global, networked and competitive. Welfarist governments especially in the global South are becoming increasingly entrepreneurial, and in the process poor citizens are getting pushed to the margins, evicted from their land and relocated to city fringes. Hyderabad in India provides an interesting illustration of neoliberal development trends in which poor local farmers are forced off their land to make way for a ‘world‐class’ knowledge enclave, popularly known as Cyberabad. This paper examines the policies and processes by which the regional government has sought to brand Hyderabad as a world‐class information technology destination and to restructure and reimagine it as a key node in a network of ‘globally connected cities’ of the world. It also considers the making of Cyberabad in terms of splintering urbanism, which is often understood as a defining feature of contemporary neoliberal urban processes.     

A study on the spatial variations in stable isotopic composition of precipitation in a semiarid region of Southern India

The stable isotope analysis of all major rain events from Moinabad (MB), Rajendranagar (RN) and Osmanasagar (OS) reservoir, three closely placed locations in Hyderabad, India, were carried out during the 2005 to 2008 period. The OS station recorded the highest amount of rainfall with an average value of 1000 mm, whereas the MB station recorded the lowest average rainfall of 790 mm. The stable isotope (δ¹⁸O) values of the precipitation samples during these period varied from ?11.43‰ to ?0.03‰ for the MB station, ?8.21‰ to 0.54‰ for the RN station and ?11.47‰ to 0.72‰ for the OS station. The d‐excess of precipitation at the three stations also showed considerable variations and revealed that the precipitation in the region undergoes significant modification through secondary evaporation during its fall. The possible causes for these observed spatial and temporal variations in amount and the isotopic composition of precipitation in a small geographical area within the city were studied. The observed variations may be attributed to the regional scale differences in water budget induced by rapid urbanisation activities in the city coupled with the differences in secondary effects undergone by the falling drops. This study elucidating changes in precipitation patterns in the city and its possible causes may largely help in its water balance calculation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Automated detection of slum area change in Hyderabad,India using multitemporal satellite imagery

This paper presents an approach to automated identification of slum area change patterns in Hyderabad, India, using multi-year and multi-sensor very high resolution satellite imagery. It relies upon a lacunarity-based slum detection algorithm, combined with Canny- and LSD-based imagery pre-processing routines. This method outputs plausible and spatially explicit slum locations for the whole urban agglomeration of Hyderabad in years 2003 and 2010. The results indicate a considerable growth of area occupied by slums between these years and allow identification of trends in slum development in this urban agglomeration.     

Shear wave velocity structure beneath the Archaean granites around Hyderabad, inferred from receiver function analysis

Broadband receiver functions abstracted from teleseismicP waveforms recorded by a 3-component Streckeisen seismograph at Hyderabad, have been inverted to constrain the shear velocity structure of the underlying crust. Receiver functions obtained from the Hyderabad records of both shallow and intermediate focus earthquakes lying in different station-event azimuths, show a remarkable coherence in arrival times and shapes of the significant shear wave phases:Ps, PpPs, PsPs/PpSs, indicating horizontal stratification within the limits of resolution. This is also supported by the relatively small observed amplitudes of the tangential component receiver functions which are less than 10% of the corresponding radial component. Results of several hundred inversions of stacked receiver functions from closely clustered events (within 2°), show that the crust beneath the Hyderabad granites has a thickness of 36 ± 1 km, consisting of a 10 km thick top layer in which shear wave velocity is 3.54 ± 0.07 km/sec, underlain by a 26 ± 1 km thick lower crust in which the shear wave velocity varies uniformly with a small gradient of 0.02 km/sec/km. The shear wave velocity at its base is 4.1 ± 0.05 km/sec, just above the moho transition zone which is constrained to be less than 4 km thick, overlying a 4.74 ±0.1 km/sec half space.     

From brain drain to brain gain: reverse migration to Bangalore and Hyderabad, India’s globalizing high tech cities

This paper assesses the mutual impact of returning Indian-origin skilled workers on the cities of Bangalore (Bengaluru) and Hyderabad, which have emerged as India’s leading “tech cities”. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was concern that India was losing its educated workforce to the West, particularly to the United States through a phenomenon known as “brain drain”. More recently, there is evidence that reverse brain drain is occurring, as U.S.-trained Indian professionals are returning to their home country in increasing numbers to take advantage of new growth and employment opportunities. The effects of this skilled, transnationally active labor force on various sectors of the economy, on the social and physical infrastructure of Bangalore and Hyderabad and in forging and solidifying transnational linkages between India and the United States are explored in this paper. This study also investigates the reasons why successful US professionals of Asian-Indian origin are returning to their home country via a series of personal interviews. The paper offers Bangalore and Hyderabad as “worldwide leading cities” with a niche status in the global Information Technology (IT) sector.     

Formation and emergence of ICT clusters in India: the case of Bangalore and Hyderabad

Since the 1990s, information and communication technologies clusters (ICT clusters) have been created in developing countries, especially in Asia, where India is one of the most dynamic countries. Bangalore and Hyderabad are two important examples of Indian clusters. This article aims to analyze the characteristics of ICT clusters, Indian policies to develop IC technologies, the formation and emergence of the Bangalore and Hyderabad clusters and their impacts on the population, as well as to show that ICT development is a strategic issue for India but does not benefit all of its population.     

Defining the Bull'S Eye: Satellite Imagery-Assisted Slum Population Assessment in Hyderabad,India

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to qualitative and spatial assessment of slum population numbers in Hyderabad, India using circle-based population data from the Census of India and results of the analysis of high resolution QuickBird satellite image data (2003) derived from automatic line detection and lacunarity algorithm. This approach provides plausible and spatially explicit aggregate statistics of slum population numbers within the city. This work suggests that both over- and underreporting of slum population numbers does occur in Hyderabad, and provides an improved view on the slum distribution patterns within this urban agglomeration.