Assessment of Climate Disaster Resilience Index of Dhaka City to Improve City Resilience Condition: A Case Study on Ward no. 29 of Dhaka South City Corporation

Abstract

Dhaka city, the capital of Bangladesh is already facing the severity of climate related 
hazards due to a very complex dynamics of disasters and climate change risks of this 
city. It is predicted that among the mega-cities of the world, Dhaka would be one of the 
most vulnerable place to climate change. Old Dhaka, the historic center of Dhaka city 
has developed within a process of spontaneous growth. The characteristics of high 
population density, unplanned settlements, large number of poorly built buildings, 
contiguous building pattern, poor quality utility services, narrow lanes, loose soil and 
filled soil, shortage of evacuation space, lack of disaster management equipment and 
lack of open spaces not only make Old Dhakaa highly vulnerable place for earthquake, 
fire hazard, building collapse and water logging, but also create inaccessibility of 
movement, which will make any post disaster management even worse. Ward no. 29 of 
Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) is the third most densely populated ward in 
Dhaka City. Like other areas of the Old Dhaka, this area is also vulnerable for different 
disasters. In the context of city, resilience helps to bridge the gap between disaster risk 
reduction and climate change adaptation. The Climate Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI) 
measures the capacity of a city’s infrastructure and services to withstand disasters and 
evaluates how the communities and institutions within a city are expected to deal with 
such an event. In these circumstances, this study attempts to measure the existing 
resilience condition of Ward no. 29 of DSCC by CDRI. From the study, it is observed 
that the study area has an overall CDRI score of 2.64, which indicates that the area is 
moderately resilient. As the study area is moderately resilient, any sudden disruption 
can causes great damage and makes the community more vulnerable. So, it is very 
urgent to adopt a balanced and systematic approach to address this issue. In this 
context, this research provides some important recommendations considering the 
guidelines of ‘UNISDR 2013’ and ‘The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015’, 
which can be helpful to improve the existing resilience condition of the study area as 
well as other urban areas of the country