India AI Impact Summit must put cities at the centre

AI’s success will not be measured in keynote addresses or global rankings, but in whether flood forecasts arrive earlier, heat action plans target the right neighbourhoods, infrastructure avoids maladaptation, and governance becomes anticipatory rather than reactive

New Delhi is currently hosting the India AI Impact Summit. It is structured around the civilisational ethics of Sarvajana Hitaya and Sarvajana Sukhaya — ‘welfare and happiness for all’. Its architecture rests on three sutras (guiding principles) — People, Planet, and Progress — and seven chakras that include resilience, innovation, efficiency, safe and reliable AI, and democratisation of AI resources.

The framework matters because AI is no longer seen merely as a tool for productivity or automation, but as infrastructure for inclusive development and planetary stewardship. For India and much of the Global South, the critical test of this vision lies in cities.

India's urban centres are growing rapidly while facing intensifying climate risks — recurrent flooding, water stress, and coastal vulnerability. Governance systems struggle to manage these stresses. In this context, AI’s promise should be understood not as hype but as applied climate intelligence.

AI as urban climate intelligence

Climate risks in cities are spatial, multi-layered and dynamic. Traditional planning tools such as static master plans, periodic surveys, and siloed departmental data are ill-suited to this complexity. AI’s comparative advantage lies in processing heterogeneous datasets and detecting non-linear patterns that traditional models often miss.

Recent research shows that machine learning models outperform traditional hydrological methods in predicting urban flood extents, producing high-resolution vulnerability maps that enable neighbourhood-level preparedness.

Similarly, AI-driven analysis of satellite temperature data has strengthened urban heat island mapping, with Indian cities now using building-level heat vulnerability assessments for targeted heat action plans. For informal settlements, where impacts and adaptive capacity are deeply unequal, such fine-grained intelligence is not a technical improvement; it's a matter of survival.

The Summit’s Planet sutra calls for AI that strengthens climate resilience while minimising environmental impact — most directly realised through machine learning-based early warning systems for floods, heat, and air quality.

Digital twins and dynamic planning

Beyond disaster anticipation lies a deeper structural opportunity: transforming how cities plan. Urban digital twins — virtual replicas of physical systems — are gaining global traction. By integrating AI and IoT, these platforms model infrastructure performance, mobility flows, land use changes, and environmental stresses under different scenarios.

For Indian cities, this could revolutionise planning by enabling dynamic risk modelling, assessing how density affects runoff, evaluating transit-oriented development against heat and flood exposure, and prioritising green infrastructure through real-time ecosystem analysis.

This aligns with the Resilience, Innovation, and Efficiency chakra, which promotes frugal, adaptable AI for low-resource contexts.

AI, mobility and carbon transitions

Transport remains a major contributor to urban emissions and air pollution. Studies show AI-based adaptive traffic systems reduce congestion and fuel consumption by optimising signal timing and rerouting flows in real time. Predictive analytics can improve public transportation planning, increasing ridership and operational efficiency.

However, the deployment is normative as much as technical: will AI optimise private vehicle throughput, or prioritise buses, pedestrians, and non-motorised transport?

The People sutra underscores that AI in mobility must advance equity and access, using data-driven routing and demand-responsive systems to reduce emissions and isolation. Climate-resilient transport is not only about decarbonisation, but also ensuring continuity during extreme events.

Inclusion, trust and AI divide

The Summit repeatedly acknowledges the widening ‘Global AI Divide’. In urban contexts, this divide manifests in who is visible in datasets and who is not.

If informal settlements lack reliable geospatial data or grievance systems function only in dominant languages, AI may overlook vulnerable populations. Multilingual and multimodal AI can bridge these gaps through voice-based and localised interfaces.

Inclusion also demands safeguards. Research in AI ethics underscores risks of algorithmic bias in resource allocation and disaster response. The Summit’s Safe and Trusted AI chakra must translate into urban data governance standards ensuring transparency, explainability, and accountability in climate-related decisions.

From declarations to demonstrable impact

Global AI governance conversations, from the G20 AI Principles to the Hamburg Declaration, have articulated values. The India AI Impact Summit positions itself as moving from aspiration to implementation.

For cities, this means institutionalising AI within planning and disaster management frameworks: Embedding ML-based risk maps into statutory planning processes, creating shared AI toolkits for urban local bodies, investing in human capital, and, establishing interoperable urban data platforms.

If the Summit succeeds in democratising computing resources and strengthening collaborative research ecosystems, cities in the Global South could leapfrog legacy planning limitations.

The stakes are tangible. AI’s success will not be measured in keynote addresses or global rankings, but in whether flood forecasts arrive earlier, heat action plans target the right neighbourhoods, infrastructure avoids maladaptation, and governance become anticipatory rather than reactive.

In a century defined by climate volatility, resilience is intelligence applied in time. If the India AI Impact Summit places cities at the centre of its agenda, it may redefine AI not as an abstract technological frontier, but as a public good embedded in the everyday survival of urban life.

Anushree Harde is Associate Fellow and Area Convenor, Transport and Urban Governance Division, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Shri Prakash is a Distinguished Fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)