Making cities resilient: Urban disaster management authority (UDMA) in India

This paper examines the provision of Urban Disaster Management Authority (UDMA), a new institutional mechanism, that was introduced by the Disaster Management (Amendment) Act, 2025. This initiative is helpful from the point of view of required autonomy to major cities and urban centers in India to plan and execute disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures. However, it is important that such evolving institutional framework should be considered from a broader disaster resilience framework, incorporating among other climate change adaptation (CCA) measures. This paper using two examples, HYDRAA in Hyderabad and Sustainable Resilience Unit in Visakhapatnam, and argues that the mandate and roles of the UDMA must be developed by integrating it with other related initiatives such as climate mission, smart cities etc.