The Context & Solution
- Designed a two-front flood resilience data collection and fund estimation digital service — Apda Mitra
- Identified the "garbage-in, garbage-out" problem in data collection.
- Designed RBAC information architecture to connect siloed stakeholders.
- Architected a real-time validation framework to provide instant approval pathways for emergency procurement.
The Proposed Solution
Apda Mitra is a digital ecosystem designed to bridge the "garbage-in, garbage-out" gap in disaster data collection. It links ground-level evidence directly to fiscal approval workflows, ensuring transparent and rapid fund disbursement.
Mumbai and its vulnerabilities
Mumbai, a coastal area of 387.32 km² with over 9.3 million people, is highly vulnerable due to its geography and high population density.
The district is prone to multiple hazards like earthquakes, cyclones, and landslides. But floods are a definite annual recurring, wicked problem because they are multi-modal—caused by a mix of its vulnerabilities:
- Infrastructure: Inadequate drainage networks.
- Geography: Low-lying regions and river overflow.
- Economic: High mixed land use.
- Climatic: Heavy rainfalls and cloudbursts.
All these are exacerbated by informal settlements, siltation, and resource gaps.
City and Disaster
The 26th of July 2005 is the benchmark disaster, defined by an unprecedented rainfall of 944.2 mm in the Suburban District, which led to the "complete disruption of normal life". This extreme event overwhelmed the city's drainage network, which is already compromised by geography, reclaimed land, and urbanization. The resulting floods caused widespread "havoc" and "huge economic losses," establishing the benchmark for Mumbai's critical flood risk.
Since the benchmark 2005 disaster, Mumbai has continued to face multiple "Flood like situations," including significant, recurring events in 2017 and 2019 that affected the entire Greater Mumbai area.
Healthcare choke point
When the city of Mumbai floods, its critical infrastructure is paralyzed. In this recurring crisis, the most devastating failure is that of its public hospitals.
These facilities, the last line of defence for the populace, are often the first to be compromised—basements flood, power systems fail, and life-saving equipment is destroyed. This turns a manageable natural hazard into a full-scale urban catastrophe.
DDMA Flood Recovery Ecosystem
Mapping the complex web of stakeholders, from ground-level volunteers to medical colleges and state health departments.
Addl. Comm. (BMC)
6 — Health
13 — PWD
Asst. Comm.
EOC
MS
Engineer
SDMA
Ministry
/ State Audit
Consultant
Safety Audit
Inspection
Reporting
Memorandum
Fund Request
Field Visit
Activation
Risk Scoring
Compilation
(ad hoc)
Meeting
Forms
Tool
Forms
Website
Portal
EOC App
Understanding the interplay between municipal, state, and central agencies during the fiscal response phase.
Stakeholder Mapping
DDMA/ PDNA Consultant
Hospital Staff
Hospital Administrator
Ward Engineer
Zonal Officer
DDMA addn. Commissioner
Expert Interview: PDNA Framework
To strengthen the ground reality of practices mentioned in the documents, expert interviews were conducted with a PDNA Consultant and two DEOC architects. The following were some key insights that were later themed.
Insights
User persona
Developing deep empathy for users operating under high-intensity crisis scenarios.
Experience mapping
Service failure matrix
A systematic breakdown of service failures across the current manual workflow.
Problem statement
Mumbai city’s government hospitals experience annual flooding that impacts its functioning due to poor recovery due to poor, unverifiable and unstandardised data collection that leads to insensible recovery fund estimation and fair distribution based on ground reality.
How might we
How might we give the DDMA Administrator a single, transparent, and auditable source of truth for hospital flood risk — so that capital recovery investment decisions are objectively justifiable?
A Glass Box Defensible Data collection and fund estimation 2-front digital system for Mumbai's government hospitals — that eliminates the Garbage In / Garbage Out problem at source, and a command dashboard that replaces the expert's Black Box with a fully transparent, decomposable, audit-ready risk score — giving the Administrator the Defensible Confidence to justify recovery investment.
Task analysis
Breaking down the interaction models for both the Field Collection App and the Central Admin Dashboard.
Data collection and fund estimation framework
The two application service ecosysyem, Apda Mitra proposes viewing the situation as before and fater data collection, Apda Mitra Field and Apda Mitra Command
Feature requirement board
Role based access control
User flows
IA
Key screens
Apda Mitra Command App
Apda Mitra Field App
Prototype
Proxy stakeholder co-designing
The iterative workshop process focused on identifying friction points and validating the service framework:
Participants were assigned stakeholder roles and briefed on their specific statutory responsibilities.
Participants were asked to think aloud while navigating the Field and Command apps in crisis scenarios.
Conducted a 5-point Likert survey to quantify usability, confidence, and perceived transparency.
Observed that complete co-design could not be fully successful due to a lack of specialized disaster expertise among proxies.
Conclusion
The RBAC two-front glass box service framework is a new approach in risk management that can help bridge the data and communication gaps between siloed stakeholders.
Future Directions
- Testing Confidence Scoring with real flood data and verified assessment scores.
- Expanding the framework to other government infrastructures under BMC, such as public schools, railways, and arterial road networks.
Market Opportunities
The digital service can be extended directly to other infrastructural risk assessment and budget estimation scenarios during disaster management.
The indirect opportunity lies in corporate risk management as well as adapting the framework for various non-disaster government departments that require transparent, multi-layer approval chains.