Appraising the need for disaster mitigation in existing planning documents of Municipal Corporations of Kerala in the event of past disasters

Abstract

The state of Kerala has a long history of natural disasters, of which the most recent disasters happen to be the floods and subsequent landslides in 2018 and 2019. Comparatively, the floods of 2018 and 2019 have claimed many lives, destroyed houses and have affected the normalcy and livelihood of many people than the earlier disasters that have occurred in Kerala. Apart from the floods, disasters like cyclones, earthquakes and droughts have also affected Kerala in the past. Understanding the vulnerability of Kerala to disasters, it is a requisite to address the same in the planning documents of every each district of Kerala. In many cases of disaster, it has been observed that the predicted susceptible area has drastically differed from the actual affected area. So as to signify the need of an in-depth disaster mitigation intervention in all the districts of Kerala, this paper intends to recommend a few suggestions and modifications to the existing planning documents of Municipal Corporations of Kerala through a condensed study on the impact of various disasters on different sectors of all the six Municipal Corporations of Kerala.