Executive Summary : | Delhi, the national capital of India, has been witnessing urban flooding now and then. A recent report indicates that between 1986 and 2016, the inundated area has increased by 2.46%, affecting 10.25% more road networks. The major factors leading to a dismal situation are its geographical location along the banks of River Yamuna, dense population and unplanned settlements, inefficient and obsolete man-made drainage systems, and frequent extreme rainfalls with changes in weather and climate patterns. To combat the adverse impacts of flooding, city planners and water experts have been actively investigating the susceptibility of areas likely to be flooded through flood inundation mapping. However, the elephant in the room is the severe microbial contamination of floodwaters, which results in exposure to infection, human suffering, and in extreme cases, loss of life. The reported number of vector-borne diseases post-flooding has risen by a margin of 12.03% between 1986 and 2016 and is expected to increase to as high as 142% around the 2030s. Numerous reports highlight bacterial and viral diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, typhoid, and dengue during flood incidences. Given the disaster looming situations, it is vital to account for the human-health risk under changing climate and socio-economic dynamics while at the same time accounting for flood risk. The present study evokes the need to establish an integrated framework to understand the link between flooding and human-health risk from contaminated floodwaters under concomitant climate and socio-economic changes. Future rainfall projections from General Circulation Models under RCP 4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios will be downscaled to account for climate change. On the other hand, to account for socio-economic changes, the best and worst, SSP1 and SSP3 scenarios will be fixed, respectively. A sophisticated and efficient MIKE+ Flood-MIKE EcoLab coupled model will be developed to quantify the flooding dynamic (e.g., inundation area and depth, flood velocity) and water quality parameters (temperature, pH, DO, NO3−, BOD, and Faecal Indicator Bacteria), simultaneously. The simulated outputs will be utilized to determine the flood risk and associated human health risk. The study aims to identify the hot spots over the case study, which are susceptible to show severe human-health risks from exposure to contaminated floodwaters. To disseminate the outcomes of research to the end-users, the observations from the study will be shared with agencies working on water resources, disaster management, and public health, such as Delhi Jal Board, State Pollution Control Board, AIIMS New Delhi. The outcomes of this research are vital towards addressing multi-faceted challenges associated with urban flooding under climate and socio-economic changes, thereby forming a solid foundation for resilience building and adaptation measures. |