Addressing resilience to cyclones - a perspective

Cyclone is one of the major natural hazards that threatens human lives, livestock, agriculture, infrastructure, buildings, forest and wild life in coastal areas. As the Bay of Bengal basin is more prone to cyclogenesis compared to the Arabian Sea, the East coast of India has been more vulnerable to cyclones than the West coast. During the last two decades or so, the intensity of cyclones has increased mainly over the North Indian Ocean. It could be attributed to warming of seas among other factors. The stronger winds resulted in higher storm surges and waves, which led to deeper inundation of inland areas and made coastal regions highly vulnerable. We have to live with the hazards of cyclones and prepare ourselves to build resilience, especially to save lives. The impacts of cyclones are through strong winds, storm surges, heavy rainfall and floods. Hence, in order to build effective response mechanism, we need to assess our vulnerability to such events