New Delhi, May 04: “Corporate boardrooms must factor climate risks into core decisions, CEEW’s CRAVIS can transform how India plans in a hotter world,” said Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, at the launch of the Climate Resilience Analytics and Visualisation Intelligence System (CRAVIS) today in New Delhi. According to projections by CRAVIS, a new first-of-its-kind AI-powered climate intelligence platform developed by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), India could see an additional 15 to 40 unusually hot days each year in the next two decades due to accelerating climate change, compared to the 1981–2010 climatic baseline. Unusually warm nights are also projected to rise by 20–40 days annually in several regions. This affects human health by preventing the body from cooling down after the sun sets and has implications for labour productivity, infrastructure performance, and economic resilience.
CRAVIS combines over 40 years of historical climate data with projections extending to 2030–2050 and 2051–2070. It enables district-level analysis across 279 indicators under multiple emission and global warming scenarios. It also allows users to overlay climate data with sectoral datasets—such as India’s power infrastructure, agriculture, land use, and public health information—for integrated risk analysis. The platform is designed as a collaborative data commons, inviting organisations and partners to contribute datasets and analysis to continuously expand and strengthen its intelligence base. The development of CRAVIS has been supported by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, HSBC Foundation, Spectrum Impact, India Climate Collaborative, and Rainmatter Foundation.
Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, added in his keynote,
“Last night felt like one of the hottest nights we have experienced in April. Rising temperatures, increasing hot days, and more frequent heavy rainfall events are clear signals that climate change is a present reality for India, shaping our economy and daily lives. Over the last decade, under Prime Minister Modi’s leadership, India has worked to make climate action an economically viable proposition, not just an obligation. Going forward, corporate boardrooms will have to factor climate risks into their core decision-making. Today, I am delighted to launch CRAVIS, an AI-powered climate intelligence platform from CEEW that can serve as India’s offering to the wider world in public climate intelligence. This is an important addition to India’s growing digital public infrastructure, which has already seen success stories such as UPI, ONDC, Vaccine Maitri, amongst others. I hope companies will use platforms like CRAVIS to guide investments, assess risks, and convert each challenge into an economically viable opportunity..”
Dr Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), said,
“At CEEW, we believe better intelligence must be more widely accessible. This platform builds on 12 years of our work on climate resilience: from early global efforts in 2014-15 to more granular, city-level analyses, such as our work in Amaravati or mapping risks across all districts, to now creating a dynamic, AI-enabled system to strengthen resilience. Despite advances in climate science and AI, decision-makers still need actionable insights that enable timely action. CRAVIS is designed to move climate intelligence from models to the hands of decision-makers at all levels of governance, making it usable, trusted, and embedded in everyday planning and response systems across sectors and scales, from districts to markets in India and, eventually, across the Global South.”
CRAVIS also finds that more than half of India’s 281 data centres are already exposed to temperatures above 35°C for over 90 days annually; by 2040, nearly 90 per cent could face similar heat exposure, significantly increasing cooling needs and operating costs. Further, in Delhi, warmer nights (minimum temperatures above 20°C) are projected to rise from around 180 days a year today to over 210 days in the next 25 years—equivalent to an additional month of cooling demand, with implications for both peak electricity load and annual consumption. Alongside rising temperatures, heavy rainfall events are also projected to increase steadily in the next two decades. According to CRAVIS, many districts could see 10 to 30 additional heavy rainfall days annually. Central and southern states such as Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu are expected to witness stronger increases in both rainfall and hot days. CEEW’s findings come as India faces intensifying climate extremes, from early heatwaves to emerging concerns around a potential ‘Super El Niño’. India is already witnessing rising exposure to heat, with over 57 per cent of districts and nearly 75 per cent of the population facing high to very high heat risk.
Dr Vishwas Chitale, Fellow, CEEW, said,
“CRAVIS can deliver real impact when embedded into routine decision-making. It makes complex climate intelligence accessible to policymakers, industrialists, financial experts, journalists, and urban planners. State departments can use district-level heat and rainfall indicators to update heat action plans and preparedness strategies; urban local bodies can integrate climate layers into master plans and infrastructure investments; and regulators and utilities can incorporate projections into demand forecasting and resilience planning.”
Vaibhav Chugh, Technology and AI Lead, CEEW, said,
“The agentic AI platform in CRAVIS makes climate data far easier to use. Users can explore district-level risks through maps, charts, and dashboards, or ask questions in natural language—such as how rising heat could shape electricity demand in Delhi, or how changing rainfall and temperatures could affect tea production in Assam—and receive clear, source-attributed insights from validated datasets within seconds. This brings together ease of use with scientific rigour, helping users move from data to decisions much faster.”
CRAVIS makes climate data available at district, grid, and state levels across 279 indicators, distilled into over 20 analysis-friendly metrics spanning temperature, precipitation, and humidity, including extreme heat days, heavy rainfall events, drought severity, and longest dry spells. Drawing on authoritative sources such as the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the Forest Survey of India (FSI), IIT Delhi, IITM Pune, and others, the platform is designed to deliver credible, decision-ready climate intelligence at scale. Conceived as a dynamic system, CRAVIS will be updated as underlying datasets are refreshed, ensuring it remains a continuously evolving resource for climate-informed planning in an increasingly uncertain future.
“Unusually hot days” refer to days with daily mean temperatures exceeding the district-specific 90th percentile threshold, based on the 1981–2010 climatic baseline.
The Climate Resilience Analytics and Visualisation Intelligence System (CRAVIS) is now live and can be accessed at: https://cravis.ai/
