Kumar, Saransh (2026) The Baseline of Fragility and Capability: Hedging Socio-Environmental Impacts of Char Dham Expressway in Uttarakhand, India. SSRN. (Submitted)
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| Abstract: | Conventional socio-environmental impact assessments (SEIA) generally rely on linear evaluations that fail to accommodate the complex, multi-scalar realities of infrastructure expansion. In ecologically fragile regions, development phases frequently stall or overlap, creating a temporal parallelity, which disrupts standard temporal baselines required for accurate longitudinal tracking. To navigate this uncertainty, this study examines the Char Dham Mahamarg project in the Uttarakhand Himalayas. It proposes a methodological convergence by integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with a TabNet machine learning (ML) architecture. Using this socially informed and ML automated architecture, the study mapped cross-thematic interactions among 49 socio-economic indicators across 463 local households.,Rather than forcing a static baseline onto a highly dynamic system, this framework accounts for the chaotic sequencing of actual construction. The model classified household capabilities with 80% accuracy, revealing that reserve land assets, educational access, and economic mobility act as non-linear drivers for registering community resilience. When spatialized against environmental time-series data, these capability scores reveal latent impact trajectories, visible across the physical landscape. Moving away from procedural stock-taking, this approach provides a diagnostic tool for policy makers to evaluate shifting vulnerabilities and support anticipatory planning in data-scarce developmental contexts. |
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| Item Type: | Journal Paper |
| Keywords: | Development, Indicator Engineering, Machine Learning, Spatial Analysis, Socio-Environmental Impact Assessment, Temporal Parallelity |
| Subjects: | School of Conflict and Security Studies > Others School of Conflict and Security Studies |
| Divisions: | Schools > Conflict and Security Studies |
| Date Deposited: | 22 May 2026 10:50 |
| Last Modified: | 22 May 2026 10:50 |
| Official URL: | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i... |
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| Funders: | * |
| Projects: | * |
| DOI: | https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6638053 |
| URI: | http://eprints.nias.res.in/id/eprint/3371 |
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