Sheltering from a gathering storm: Flood Resilience in India

The Sheltering From a Gathering Storm project aims to improve understanding of the costs and benefits of climate resilient housing and contribute to the transformative change necessary to make communities more resilient to future disasters. Flooding and inundation are recurring problems in the city of Gorakhpur, which is located in the midGangetic Plain between the Rapti and Rohini River basins. Shelter is one of the most important factors influencing the exposure of people and assets to disaster risks. Flood- and climate-adapted shelter designs protect livelihoods and assets and reduce the types of climate-disaster-related losses that impoverish families, thus playing a critical role in enabling vulnerable groups to accumulate the resources required for long-term adaptation. Also, following disasters, the construction of temporary and permanent shelters is one of the largest cost items for governments and disaster response organizations, which could be reduced or eliminated with design improvements. This case study report is structured as follows: Section 1 introduces project stakeholders and policies, section 2 presents the research methodology and its limitations, section 3 highlights results and discussions, section 4 discusses policy implications and recommendations, and section 5 presents the project’s conclusions.