Assessing Urban Migrant Community for Socio-ecological Resilience: A Case of Ghata Village, Gurugram

India’s metropolitan regions due to their interdependence, complexity, and expanding urban population as well as their high population density are very vulnerable to both environmental risks and hazards. These have a domino effect on the city’s neighborhood regions, particularly urban villages. These urban villages have off late seen an exponential growth due to migrant influx both spatially and demographically. Does this make the area more vulnerable to risks? The paper explores the complex correlation of disaster risks and pre-existing localized vulnerabilities and exposure. The authors also discuss the shifting perception and definition of risk from global to local and vice versa as referenced in the 2030 SDG Agenda, where this “localization” tendency has seen the introduction of a “urban” Goal (SDG11), but also through linkages between a range of urban-relevant objectives and indicators covered across the 17 SDGs. Past studies have reflected that risk assessment done has focused on economic-based approach, here the authors focus on importance of socio-ecological data, (due to migrant population in urban suburbs or villages) and establish its relation with “localization” and contextualization. The paper analyses the existing community resilient models to derive the relevant socio-ecological indicators and tests it with the data collected from the Ghata village, an urban village of Gurugram. The migrant community residing in the Ghata village is tested for vulnerability using the GTZ vulnerability model. The data collection is done by conducting focused interviews based on important parameters and indicators of socio-ecological resilience.