‘Risk Zones’, Vulnerabilities, and Mobility Trends in the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic in India: Reflections from the Kolkata Metropolitan Area
Purva YADAV, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Aisharya BHATTACHARJEE, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
The space-blind and uniform strategies that we have adopted to tackle the global crisis in the past have highlighted what was little and poorly perceived. It won’t be wrong to say that this lacuna has not gone unnoticed but little has been done to address it over the years. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a recent United Nations report has emphasised the importance of mapping urban vulnerability ‘to leave no one and no space behind’. World Bank has also stressed geographic targeting. Against this backdrop, we have made an exploratory attempt to highlight the role of spatial specificities in devising an effective mitigating strategy. Since COVID-19 is primarily transmitted from human to human, we hypothesised high-density and high-connectivity areas as potential high-risk zones. Given the key role of human mobility in virus transmission, a further attempt was made to understand pre-COVID travel behaviour to identify the potential policy targets in the recovery phase. Our study focuses on the Kolkata Metropolitan Area of West Bengal. Major findings are: (i) Areas with high density and connectivity are also the areas of high contagion; (ii) Spatial juxtaposition of vulnerable groups in high-risk zones stresses the need for a geographic target for devising a mitigation strategy for ongoing and future disasters; (iii) Pre-COVID mobility pattern in the high-risk zones shows a significant reliance on the mass transport system and recent data suggests that people are gradually returning to their workplaces and transit stations.
Mots clés : COVID-19|Risk Mapping|Metropolitan Region|Vulnerable Group|Mobility
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