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Concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere has been increasing rapidly during the last century due to ever increasing anthropogenic activities resulting in significant increases in the temperature of the Earth causing global warming. Major sources of GHG are forests (due to human induced land cover changes leading to deforestation), power generation (burning of fossil fuels), transportation (burning fossil fuel), agriculture (livestock, farming, rice cultivation and burning of crop residues), water bodies (wetlands), industry and urban activities (building, construction, transport, solid and liquid waste). Aggregation of GHG (CO 2 and non-CO 2 gases), in terms of Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2 e), indicate the GHG footprint. GHG footprint is thus a measure of the impact of human activities on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced. This study focuses on accounting of the amount of three important greenhouses gases namely carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and thereby developing GHG footprint of the major cities in India. National GHG inventories have been used for quantification of sector-wise greenhouse gas emissions. Country specific emission factors are used where all the emission factors are available. Default emission factors from IPCC guidelines are used when there are no country specific emission factors. Emission of each greenhouse gas is estimated by multiplying fuel consumption by the corresponding emission factor. The current study estimates GHG footprint or GHG emissions (in terms of CO 2 equivalent) for Indian major cities and explores the linkages with the population and GDP. GHG footprint (Aggregation of Carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of GHG’s) of Delhi, Greater Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Greater Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad are found to be 38,633.2 Gg, 22,783.08 Gg, 14,812.10 Gg, 22,090.55 Gg, 19,796.5 Gg, 13,734.59 Gg and 91,24.45 Gg CO 2 eq., respectively. The major contributors sectors are transportation sector (contributing 32%, 17.4%, 13.3%, 19.5%, 43.5%, 56.86% and 25%), domestic sector (contributing 30.26%, 37.2%, 42.78%, 39%, 21.6%, 17.05% and 27.9%) and industrial sector (contributing 7.9%, 7.9%, 17.66%, 20.25%, 12.31%, 11.38% and 22.41%) of the total emissions in Delhi, Greater Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Greater Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, respectively. Chennai emits 4.79 t of CO 2 equivalent emissions per capita, the highest among all the cities followed by Kolkata which emits 3.29 t of CO 2 equivalent emissions per capita. Also Chennai emits the highest CO 2 equivalent emissions per GDP (2.55 t CO 2 eq./Lakh Rs.) followed by Greater Bangalore which emits 2.18 t CO 2 eq./Lakh Rs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recurrent floods are severely affecting the built assets and people of numerous Indian cities. Urban flood being a comparatively nascent area of research is often dealt with strategies apt for other disasters. The conventional approach of hazard zonation lacks vital information on human vulnerability. This paper addresses this lacuna by identifying vulnerable population and their precise cause of vulnerability for a case study of the city of Guwahati. It is the largest urban and financial centre of north-east India, a disaster hotspot and exclusive link connecting the region and the mainland. Guwahati's 31 municipal wards were gradedparallel for flood hazard and human vulnerability in five categories each (very high to very low). Analytic Hierarchy Process based survey with 16 domain experts and Geographic Information System were used for hazard mapping using factors causing urban flood grouped under environment and urbanization. For vulnerability mapping, questionnaire survey, based on the Human Development Index and other published disaster vulnerability indices, was carried out with 1023 citizens. For 38.70% cases, wards descended by one category from hazard grouping to vulnerability grouping i.e. a ward prone to flooding may not be perceived as equally vulnerable. A strong correlation of 73.5% validated this fact. For obtaining a holistic picture, the top-down approach from experts was tallied with its bottom-up counterpart of citizen's observation. The knowledge will help in making focused policies and prioritize funds for development planning, that are critical for cities of developing countries which lack resources to tackle the growing wrath of urban floods. • Development of urban flood hazard map and human vulnerability index (HVI) for Guwahati. • Seven thematic GIS layers of factors causing urban flood, weighted by domain experts. • Vulnerability of the population in each ward of the city obtained from HVI. • Holistic formulation of focused policies for urban flood management in similar cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy consumption constitutes one of the important sources of carbon dioxide emission which cause global warming. This paper analyses greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to energy consumption in the domestic sector considering household activities and socioeconomic parameters. A stratified random survey of 1967 households in Bangalore pertaining to the energy consumption reveals that annual per capita electricity consumption ranges from 9.64 to 2337 kW h/year with an average of 336±267 kW h/year. Emission from most of the wards (66 wards) is about 10–15 Gg/year, while wards in peri-urban areas emit less than 10 Gg/year. Extrapolation of these, show that total carbon dioxide from all wards of Greater Bangalore accounts to 3350 Gg/Year. The energy consumption analyses reveal a proportional increase in the per capita energy consumption with the family income suggesting that economic levels in respective wards is an important parameter in the domestic energy consumption and also GHG emissions. Suggested interventions through large scale penetration of renewable sources of energy and energy conservation would help in reducing greenhouse gases and consequent warming of the Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]