Ludhiana among 9 cities vulnerable to future heat waves: Study
Ludhiana is among nine Indian cities that are most vulnerable to future heat waves because they are ill-prepared to face global warming, a new study has found.
The study by the Sustainable Futures Collaborative (SFC), titled, “Is India ready for a warming world?”, examines how nine Indian cities—Ludhiana, Delhi, Bengaluru, Faridabad, Gwalior, Kota, Meerut, Mumbai, and Surat—are implementing heat resilience measures as they face increasing extreme heat.
These cities represent over 11 per cent of India’s urban population and are some of the most vulnerable to future heat waves.
The report, co-authored by scholars from SFC, King’s College London, Harvard University, Princeton University, and University of California, Berkeley, finds that while immediate, short-term responses to heat waves are common, long-term, proactive strategies remain largely absent or poorly targeted.
SFC is an independent research organisation analysing frontier issues in climate change, energy, and the environment.
The report warns that India’s current approach, which prioritises emergency relief, will not be enough as heat waves become more frequent, intense, and prolonged. “Without a shift toward long-term planning, India faces rising heat-related deaths and economic losses,” it predicted.
Experts emphasised that cities must be redesigned with climate resilience in mind and that HAPs should be strengthened to serve as a central tool for identifying and protecting at-risk populations.
According to the key findings, these cities have implemented short-term actions such as providing drinking water, adjusting work schedules, and increasing hospital capacity. “While these efforts are necessary and life-saving, they fail to address the root causes of heat vulnerability,” the study noted.
It found that the policy is driven by government directives, and not heat action plans (HAPs). “Most short-term measures result from directives from national and state disaster management and health authorities rather than city-level HAPs, which often include long-term solutions, and have had limited impact due to weak institutionalisation,” it said.
The study revealed that long-term solutions are lacking or poorly targeted as these cities have failed to implement critical long-term strategies such as expanding cooling access for vulnerable populations, strengthening insurance for heat-related income losses, improving fire management, and upgrading the electricity grid. “Measures such as mapping urban heat islands, increasing urban green cover, and deploying rooftop solar have been implemented but lack proper targeting for at-risk populations,” the experts observed, while adding that other crucial areas such as urban planning and labour protections also remain neglected.
Over two-thirds of respondents reported adequate funding for current heat response measures. “However, since these are mostly inexpensive, temporary actions, securing dedicated funding for long-term structural changes remains a challenge,” the experts said.
The study said the biggest obstacles to long-term planning are poor coordination among municipal, district, and state departments, personnel shortages, weak technical capacity, and a general lack of recognition of heat as a major issue.
Experts recommended strengthening HAPs at the local level to institutionalise long-term strategies, utilisation of disaster mitigation funds to support heat risk reduction projects, and providing adequate authority and resources to emerging chief heat officers (CHOs) to ensure they can effectively address institutional challenges.
They suggested implementing a targeted capacity-building programme, establishing trained disaster management personnel at the district level with expertise in long-term risk mitigation, launching a targeted active cooling program, and subsidising energy-efficient air conditioning for the most heat-exposed populations.
Stressing the need for improving climate data accessibility for policymakers, the report said only two out of 42 officials interviewed had access to climate projections.
Vulnerable Ludhiana
High increase in the number of extreme heat index days relative to a historical baseline that the city will see in a world where global temperatures breach the 1.5°C threshold, according to climate modelling output, led to Ludhiana’s inclusion in the study.
