A comprehensive guide to how water flows through Bengaluru is available at Building a Resilient Bengaluru. This is part of a project by Mod Foundation in partnership with Oorvani.
This aims to be a guide for anyone who may be interested in studying the topography, understanding channels and how they are connected. We hope researchers and analysts will take up projects using this, that can help government agencies in their planning and active citizen groups in identifying issues and reforms needed. This is a living project being updated as we get more information from citizen audits.
To facilitate this, Mod Foundation and Oorvani have been engaging with the public in knowledge building. We started with a typology workshop conducted on 11th Oct 2025 that helped people identify and map different types of drains- primary, secondary and tertiary along the storm water path in various parts of the city. The objective of this workshop was to create a database of the stormwater system which will hold accurate alignment of the drains as well as information on their urban adjacencies. Read more here.
This was followed by a masterclass on 9th Jan to help people understand the function of drains, current status, what affects flow and how it impacts us. It emphasised documentation- understanding what exists today, who governs and maintains it, and how growth pressures are addressed.
After the masterclass, Mod Foundation has been conducting guided audits where citizens can participate and verify the presence of infrastructure that supports the drains, encroachments, water quality, sewage influx, physical parameters and more. It is being facilitated to have citizens understand how to perform an audit with the use of tools and a detailed guide for how to document the audited parameters. An account of one such is available here.
See also: Mapping Bengaluru’s stormwater drains: A citizen’s audit guide We expect to see various civic groups and interested volunteers use the guide and take up more audits across the city. For more details, contact us.