Climate risk turns focus on need for disaster-resilient infrastructure

ICDRI 2022, global conference on building tough assets, begins in Delhi this week

On May 3, 2019, when Fani, a rare summer cyclone and one of the strongest to hit India in 20 years, came raging down the Odisha coast, the state was prepared. The storm, with wind speeds touching over 200 km per hour, damaged power lines, uprooted trees, blew roofs off buildings and left 64 people dead. But it could have been many times worse – as experience from the 1999 Odisha super-cyclone had shown; that storm had claimed over 9,600 lives and caused damage worth $2.5 billion to the state. Today, the Odisha model of disaster preparedness is globally lauded