Number: 1424249

Marginalized vulnerable coastal communities living along the urban coasts are continuously under the dual threat of natural hazards and the adverse impact of infrastructure development, which results in the increase of cumulative risk for these communities. Further, the irreversible impacts of climate change have also exacerbated the risks associated with aging infrastructure and vulnerable coastal communities. Therefore, strengthening the climate resilience of such communities stands as a duly acknowledged priority for developing nations. One of the possible solutions to strengthen climate resilience is through the development and implementation of sustainable hybrid infrastructure alternatives. In this work, we characterized the data-driven Coastal Infrastructure Resilience Index (CIRI) to assess the performance of existing coastal infrastructure along the coast of Mumbai City in India. This study thoroughly utilized the potential of high-resolution remote-sensing imagery and socio-economic parameters from SEDAC data to derive CIRI. The robustness of the CIRI is improved with integrated value function and expert knowledge. As both grey infrastructure, such as seawalls, levees, and bulkheads and green infrastructure, such as salt marshes, mangroves, beaches, dunes, oysters and coral reefs have limited resilience in a multi-hazard environment, we identified the major hotspots of concerns through CIRI to propose the plausible hybrid (green-grey) infrastructure alternatives (green-grey) using Adaptive Gradient Framework for Mumbai’s coastal context. Adapting Hybrid infrastructure alternatives empowers coastal communities with heightened climate benefits and co-benefits. The major findings of this study contribute as a science-policy instrument to localize the Sustainable Development Goals 11(11.5, 11. b), 13, and 14.2 of the United Nations.

Keyword- Integrated Coastal Management, Adaptation, risk-informed, Urban coastal areas, decision-analysis