Climate Change and Spatial Distribution of Heatwave Vulnerable Slum Population in Hyper Urbanized Metropolitan Delhi (NCT), India

Deepak Verma, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India
Nandita Saikia, International Institute for Population Sciences

Heatwave is major climatic threat for the global world as their frequency, intensity and duration are increasing. Delhi is one of the hotspots of heatwaves in India. This study identifies and categorises the 675 slum clusters of Delhi for their vulnerability towards heatwave. The vulnerability of Slum clusters was analysed using GIS-based weight overlay analysis (WOA), Frequency Ratio model and Statistical Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which include 14 climatic and sociodemographic factors of the study population. The resulting vulnerability map, validated with an ROC curve of 81% accuracy, categorises the clusters into five vulnerability groups. A significant portion of these clusters, specifically 308, comprise 0.712 million people, and are classified as very high risk, representing 45.58% of the total population. This indicates a substantial threat to the residents of these areas. Additionally, 143 clusters are categorised as Highly vulnerable, comprising 21.15% of the population. Slums in revenue districts like South Western Delhi, Southern Delhi and Central Delhi are particularly vulnerable due to high maximum temperature, high built-up structure and high population density, which encapsulate around 74 % of slum clusters under very high and high vulnerability categories. This study offers valuable information to policymakers and disaster management professionals.

Keywords: Population, Environment, and Climate Change, Population and Development, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Geo-referenced/geo-coded data

See extended abstract.