Hierarchical framework for assessment of water sensitivity in land use planning: case of Raipur urban agglomeration, India

Urbanization has pushed resources to the edge, and there is massive pressure on land and water. The current city planning method is focused on the allocation of land use based on the optimal use of land resources, where water sensitive planning as an approach has few takers. A scale dependent, hierarchical understanding of the process of water sensitive planning with respect to urbanization vis-a-vis land use land cover transformation is lacking. In this study, we have adopted an index based approach where the water stress levels of zones delineated within a region can be depicted using a Water Stress Index (WSI) for two different hierarchical levels of evaluation, namely neighborhood level and regional level. A Multi-criteria Weighted Aggregation (MCWA) method has been used for the formulation of the WSI, and it has been found that the index has a negative correlation with the groundwater level at the neighborhood scale where as it has a strong negative correlation at the regional scale thus WSI can be used as a proxy for groundwater levels in the city as well as neighborhood level and simultaneously can indicate the water stress vulnerability of the region. The study implicates the delineation of hydro-geographical boundaries for master planning purposes and usage of the composite WSI for identification of vulnerable zones both at the regional and neighborhood scales. Resource allocation and policy decision like taxation/pricing can be based on such index values. The limitations of the study are primarily driven by the lack of socioeconomic data at micro level, the findings though statistically significant were not strong enough for taking the discourse forward.