Bhubaneswar has put its climate risks on a public map. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has launched the Bhubaneswar Climate Digital Twin, an open-access platform that lets residents look up heat stress, flood exposure and air quality for their own neighbourhood, and lets civic officials target interventions where the risk is highest.
The platform was unveiled by Tokhan Sahu, Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs, at the 19th Urban Mobility India Conference and Expo 2026 on October 23, The New Indian Express reported. It is being described as India’s first interactive climate risk platform built for citizens.
Built under MoHUA’s sustainable mobility programme
BMC developed the platform with technical support from GIZ India under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ Sustainable Urban Mobility – Air Quality, Climate Action and Accessibility (SUM-ACA) project. Innpact Solutions built the system.
The digital twin combines satellite imagery, weather data and computer modelling to map three hazards across the city’s 67 wards: heat stress, urban flooding and air pollution. It also carries road-safety ratings. The model covers about 2.77 lakh buildings, around 2,000 km of roads and some 2,100 public facilities.
Measuring the heat people actually feel
Instead of relying only on air temperature, the platform tracks Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET), a measure of how hot conditions feel to the human body. Its findings for the last summer show felt-heat hotspots peaking at 46.0°C around the Airport region, 45.8°C in Dhirikuti Sahi and IDCO Colony, 45.6°C in Paikarapur and 45.4°C in Salia Sahi. Localities such as Sikharchandi Vihar, Rail Kunj Complex, Jagannath Nagar, Saheed Nagar and Adimata Colony were flagged for heavy night-time heat retention.
On flooding, historical satellite records identify residential clusters including Lingaraj Vihar, Ananta Vihar, Badagada Brit Colony, Paika Nagar and Kolathia, where more than 1,500 buildings have been inundated close to ten times over the past decade. Winter air-quality mapping points to neighbourhoods such as Sriram Nagar, Samantarapur, Kapileswar, Basisthanagar and Brahmeswar Patna, where AQI readings approach 230, with roughly 345 educational institutions exposed to poor air.
No login, an AI assistant and citizen reporting
Accessibility has been a design priority. The portal, available at climate.bmc.gov.in, works on any smartphone, tablet or computer without registration, and includes a built-in AI assistant that answers questions in plain language.
Mayor Sulochana Das said residents can search for their house, school, market or street to see live and historical data on heat stress, air quality and flood risk for that location. Citizens can also report local problems such as waterlogging, open waste burning and construction dust by uploading geotagged photographs.
BMC Commissioner Chanchal Rana said the platform will help the corporation direct resources precisely to the areas that are most vulnerable.
Why it matters
Indian cities are increasingly building command centres and dashboards for traffic, utilities and civic complaints, but climate risk data has largely stayed within planning departments and research reports. By publishing ward-level hazard maps openly and pairing them with a two-way reporting channel, Bhubaneswar is turning climate resilience into a citizen-facing digital service. The model, backed by MoHUA’s SUM-ACA programme, offers a template that other Smart Cities could adapt as heatwaves and urban flooding become more frequent.