Climate Risk Intelligence Index (CRII) : An AI-Augmented Satellite-Based Climate Vulnerability Assessment Framework for India

Climate change presents significant challenges to environmental sustainability, urban resilience, hydrological stability, and ecosystem health. Conventional climate vulnerability assessment approaches often rely on static, rule-based methods and isolated environmental indicators, limiting their ability to provide contextual and interpretable insights across geographically diverse regions. This paper proposes the Climate Risk Intelligence Index (CRII), an AI-augmented, satellite-based framework for assessing climate vulnerability across India. The framework integrates multiple Earth observation and climate datasets, including MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST), MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) built-up data, ERA5 rainfall reanalysis, and the JRC Global Surface Water dataset. These indicators are processed and aggregated into a composite climate vulnerability index across approximately 3,840 geospatial grid cells covering India. The framework also incorporates a Large Language Model (LLM)-based reasoning layer using the Groq API and the Llama 3.1 8B Instant model to support contextual environmental interpretation, dominant-risk identification, and interactive climate intelligence generation. Experimental analysis examines climate vulnerability patterns across flood-prone coastal regions, metropolitan areas, ecologically sensitive landscapes, and high-temperature arid regions. The AI reasoning component provides responses in approximately 1–3 seconds per query, supporting interactive environmental analysis. The proposed CRII framework demonstrates the potential of integrating satellite-based Earth observation, geospatial analytics, composite risk assessment, and AI-assisted reasoning into an interpretable climate decision-support system. The framework is intended to support climate vulnerability assessment, environmental monitoring, disaster preparedness, urban resilience analysis, and climate adaptation planning across India. Keywords Climate Risk Intelligence Index (CRII); Climate Vulnerability Assessment; Remote Sensing; Earth Observation; Artificial Intelligence; Large Language Models; Geospatial Analytics; Environmental Intelligence; Climate Risk; India.