Express News Service
HYDERABAD: Over 7 lakh people residing in 13 municipal wards of Greater Hyderabad are highly vulnerable to industrial and natural disasters, claims a recently published study. The number of people who are vulnerable could be much higher now, as the estimates were done based on 2011 Census data.
Hyderabad has a population density of 10,230 persons per square kilometre and close to 1,200 highly-polluting industries.
The study, that uses Remote Sensing and GIS modelling to map risk-prone areas of the city, has been published as part of the book: Proceedings of International Conference on Remote Sensing for Disaster Management, by Springer.
All industries in the GHMC area were geographically identified and mapped using high-resolution satellite images, for the study.
“Then, the intensity of pollution and their geographical influence was mapped to generate an integrate industrial risk index, which shows the municipal wards and population likely to be affected”, said Dr. Murali Krishna Gurram, Head of GIS and Applications Division, Xinthe Technologies, who conducted the study as part of his Ph.D thesis.
It was found that almost 89 per cent of the 150 wards under GHMC fell under the poor and very poor categories. While 82 wards fell under ‘Poor’ category, 51 wards fell under ‘Very poor’ category. One reason behind this is the high number of chemical industries in GHMC, which mainly include the bulk drugs and pharmaceutical unites, that number around 400.
The study also reports that four wards near Old city and 13 wards mainly concentrated near Moosapet, Kukatpally and Yousufguda regions were identified under ‘High risk’ and ‘Very high risk’ categories of facing flooding.
When it comes to the municipal wards that are highly vulnerable to both, industrial and natural risks the study reports that a total of 13 GHMC wards are the most vulnerable.
While 6 GHMC wards having 3,34,457 of the population and spread over 26.64 sq km area fall under ‘Poor’ category, 7 GHMC wards having a population of 3,93,487 population and spread over 28.87 sq km, fall under ‘Very poor’ category.
