Hyderabad, Multan, Lahore, Faisalabad and Karachi rank among the 10 least resilient cities in AlphaGeo’s global climate-risk assessment.
Web Desk: Five Pakistani cities have been ranked among the 10 least resilient major cities to climate risk globally, highlighting the country’s growing vulnerability to extreme heat, flooding and other climate-related hazards.
Hyderabad, Multan, Lahore, Faisalabad and Karachi all featured in a new assessment by AlphaGeo, a geospatial analytics company that examined the climate resilience of 72 major cities worldwide.
According to the ranking, Hyderabad, Pakistan, placed second, followed by Multan in third position. Lahore ranked fifth, Faisalabad seventh and Karachi eighth among the least resilient cities. India’s Ahmedabad topped the overall list.
Pakistan’s cities face major adaptation challenges
AlphaGeo’s assessment uses a measure called resilience-adjusted risk (RAJ), which considers the climate risk that remains after accounting for adaptation measures.
The company’s Climate Risk & Resilience Index examines physical hazards including inland and coastal flooding, heat stress, drought, wildfires and hurricane winds. It then incorporates adaptation capacity to assess the remaining risk faced by each city.
The report found that the six highest-risk major cities in its analysis are all in South Asia.
Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, Pakistan, both recorded a RAJ score of 41, while Multan scored 38, Dhaka 36 and Lahore 35.
Heat exposure drives South Asian risk
AlphaGeo said extreme heat is a major factor behind the high risk levels recorded in several South Asian cities.
The report identified a wider problem across the region: cities face substantial physical exposure to climate hazards while their adaptation rates remain relatively low compared with the scale of those risks.
This means that exposure alone does not determine how severely a city may be affected. Infrastructure, planning, governance and other adaptation measures can reduce the residual risk.
Karachi ranks eighth
Karachi was ranked eighth among the least resilient major cities in the assessment.
The city’s position comes amid longstanding concerns over flooding, extreme heat, drainage capacity and the ability of urban infrastructure to cope with increasingly severe weather events.
Faisalabad ranked seventh, while Lahore was placed fifth. Multan ranked third, behind only Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, Pakistan.
Five Pakistani cities in global bottom 10
The complete bottom 10 ranking was dominated by South Asian cities.
- Ahmedabad, India
- Hyderabad, Pakistan
- Multan, Pakistan
- Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Lahore, Pakistan
- Kolkata, India
- Faisalabad, Pakistan
- Karachi, Pakistan
- Chittagong, Bangladesh
- Taipei, Taiwan
The concentration of South Asian cities at the bottom of the ranking reflects the combination of high physical climate exposure and comparatively limited adaptation capacity identified by AlphaGeo.
Climate risk is not determined by geography alone
AlphaGeo’s analysis stresses that physical exposure does not automatically translate into the same level of residual risk.
The company found that cities with similar physical-risk scores can record substantially different RAJ scores depending on the adaptation measures they have in place. The report therefore describes resilience as a combination of underlying climate exposure and the effectiveness of adaptation.
For Pakistan, the findings point to the importance of strengthening urban infrastructure, climate planning and adaptation measures as cities face increasing pressure from extreme heat, flooding and other hazards.
What the report means for Pakistan
The assessment does not mean that every neighbourhood within these cities faces the same level of danger. AlphaGeo cautions that its scores are city-level averages, while climate risk can vary significantly between neighbourhoods and even individual locations.
However, the presence of five Pakistani cities in the global bottom 10 highlights the scale of the adaptation challenge facing the country’s major urban centres.
The report said Pakistan and Bangladesh warrant particular attention because of the combination of high urban residual risk and limited capacity to close the adaptation gap quickly enough.
