Intelligent Identification of Hazard-Based Red Zones, Carrying Capacity Assessment, and Immediate Relocation Needs for Vulnerable Habitations
Ministry of Home Affairs · Disaster Management · Software
A valuable proactive-relocation framing with a legible GIS demo, but your red zones are only as good as the patchy hazard layers you can assemble — pick a study region with genuinely available data, and present relocation priorities as evidence rather than verdicts.
What it actually is
India's disaster-prone regions keep losing lives because vulnerable settlements stay in unsafe zones and relocation only happens after a disaster. The ask is a GIS decision-support platform that identifies multi-hazard red zones unsuitable for habitation, assesses whether safer alternative sites can absorb people, and prioritises which settlements need relocating — so authorities can plan proactively.
What to build
A GIS decision-support platform that maps and updates multi-hazard red zones — combining landslide, flood, coastal-erosion and cloudburst hazard layers — assesses the carrying capacity and suitability of safer alternative relocation sites, and prioritises vulnerable habitations for immediate, short-term and medium-term relocation by integrating hazard intensity, population vulnerability and disaster history, producing actionable, evidence-based guidance for state disaster management authorities to plan relocation before disasters strike rather than after.
Smallest thing that wins the room
Show the platform overlaying hazard layers to mark a settlement inside a multi-hazard red zone, assessing a nearby candidate relocation site's carrying capacity, and ranking that settlement as immediate-priority for relocation with the hazard, vulnerability and history evidence behind the ranking.
How crowded this one gets
A guess, projected from the 2025 statements — the last year where both the submission counts and the winners were published.
Quieter than 49% of the 226 · #115 of 226 by expected field
A normal-sized field. Your idea has to be good, not miraculous.
Why: defence, intelligence and space bodies drew small fields.
This is a guess, not a fact
Nobody has published 2026’s numbers yet. This is an analysed estimate from last year’s pattern, so please do not take it as the truth — check the live counter on the SIH portal before you decide anything. The range covers the middle half of likely outcomes, so one statement in two lands outside it. Entry closes at 500 ideas per statement, so no range goes past that — a statement that reaches the cap fills and shuts rather than drawing an unlimited crowd. The model reads only three things a team can see before choosing — software or hardware, the theme, and what kind of body posted it — and those explain about a quarter of the variation in last year’s field sizes (R² 0.25 on held-out statements). Trust the band more than the number, and the ordering more than either. It cannot see how good your idea is, which is the part that actually decides it.
The scores
The number is the shorthand. The line under it is the reason.
Acceptance potential
3/5The proactive relocation framing is genuinely valuable and the GIS demo is legible, but authoritative multi-hazard and settlement-level vulnerability data is patchy so your red zones inherit the gaps in the layers you assemble, and carrying-capacity assessment needs assumptions a disaster-authority judge will scrutinise.
Feasibility
3/5Hazard layers are partly available from open sources — Bhukosh landslide susceptibility, flood hazard maps, DEMs — and GIS overlay analysis is standard, but authoritative multi-hazard and population-vulnerability data at settlement resolution is patchy, so your red zones will be as good as the hazard layers you can assemble, which vary in quality and coverage.
Innovation scope
3/5Multi-hazard zoning and site suitability are established GIS techniques, so your room is in the integration, the carrying-capacity model and the relocation-prioritisation logic rather than in the concept.
Clarity
4/5The three tasks — red-zone mapping, carrying-capacity assessment, relocation prioritisation — and the factors to integrate are stated clearly, so the target is well defined even though data sources are not named.
Effort
MassiveAssembling and integrating multiple hazard and vulnerability layers, the carrying-capacity model, the prioritisation logic and the GIS platform is a broad multi-source build.
Demo-ability
EasyHazard overlays marking a red zone and a ranked relocation priority on a map is a clear, legible, on-mission demo for a disaster-management audience.
In its favour
- Green flag: Some hazard layers are genuinely open — landslide susceptibility, flood hazard maps, DEMs — so you can build real red zones for a study area
- Green flag: The proactive-relocation framing is a valuable shift from reactive response that resonates with a disaster authority
- Green flag: Hazard overlays and ranked priorities on a map are legible, on-mission demos
- Green flag: The three clearly separated tasks let you show a working red-zone map even if carrying-capacity is simplified
Against it
- Red flag: Authoritative multi-hazard and settlement-level vulnerability data is patchy, so your red zones inherit whatever gaps the available layers have
- Red flag: Carrying-capacity assessment needs socioeconomic and infrastructure assumptions a disaster-authority judge will scrutinise
- Red flag: Relocation is a socially and politically sensitive recommendation, so a tool that prioritises habitations must present evidence, not verdicts
- Red flag: Combining heterogeneous hazard layers of differing quality into one red-zone map risks false confidence in the result
What you will be writing
- Multi-hazard GIS overlay (landslide, flood, erosion)
- Bhukosh / open hazard layers + DEM
- Population vulnerability integration
- Carrying-capacity suitability modelling
- Relocation prioritisation logic
- PostGIS + web GIS dashboard
- Disaster risk reduction
- GIS decision support
- Relocation planning
Prior art to read before you start
multi-hazard red-zone mapping · relocation site carrying capacity · vulnerable habitation prioritisation
Analysed by Claude Opus. Every score above is a judgment call with its reasoning attached — kindly cross-check this against the official statement on the SIH portal before your team commits to it.