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Ms. Soumita Chakraborty is a Project Associate at Taru Leading Edge. She completed her postgraduate work in Disaster Management at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai and is a graduate of Calcutta University, where she studied Geography. Her academic background in social science disciplines has enabled her to work in the areas of Social Impact Assessment of displaced communities in urban areas (Mumbai), review and analysis of Disaster Management Plan of Ahmednagar district (Maharashtra), village profiling and sectoral analysis of the Chatrapur Block (Ganjam District, Orissa), community-based participatory vulnerability and capacity assessment (VCA) (Dahanu, Maharashtra), socio-economic and physio-cultural study of the Kachchh area (Bhuj, Gujarat) and study of cultural geography of Bishnupur (West Bengal). In addition, she has held internships with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (risk profiling for 10 target states), New Delhi and the National CSR Hub (Mumbai) (analysis and financial scrutiny of NGO bids and projects). As a part of her work experience at TARU, she has coordinated with government departments, sectoral experts and officials for secondary data collection, city level capacity assessment, capacity building, scoping of potential shocks and stresses. She has supported stakeholder meetings, focussed group discussions and workshop, infrastructural mapping and institutional capacity assessment.
The 2015 Chennai Flood: A Case for Developing City Resilience Strategies
In November-December 2015 Chennai and its neighboring coastal districts in India experienced torrential rainfall followed by a devastating flood. Amid the chaos and widespread impact, the event brought people and institutions in and outside Chennai together, to provide support to the victims affected by the flood. Help reached the affected areas and their residents from different sections of society and in variety of forms. The lessons from this case study and others like it can help urban centers elsewhere in Asia to plan for similar eventualities.
