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Water is another name of life. The standard of quality of life in an urban area is much dependent on the extent of the availability of drinking water. Water supply is the basic responsibility of any city or town authority. Getting standard quality water is the basic need of the people. In Bangladesh, people who are living in urban areas receive piped water supply. A planned water supply system is compulsory for serving urban people with an adequate quantity of supply water of good quality. Comilla Municipality started supplying water in 1925 with few distribution mains. After forming a new Comilla City Corporation (CoCC) in 2011, the water supply system was newly maintained and operated jointly by DPHE (Department of Public Health and Engineering) and CoCC. But the planning has drawbacks and the amount of pure water supply is inadequate compared to the need. Roughly 30% of families in slums suffer from acute water shortages for daily requirements inside CoCC area. This unhygienic condition causes severe health problems for these people. Urban expansion is prevalent with the constant increase in population but water supply provision is not increasing at the same rate. Even though the urban area is expanding constantly, the political boundary is an area of 53.04 km2 which was 37.50 km2 in 1982. The growth of built-up areas expands over the political area. The expansion of residential areas to the northern part of the city is the main problem for decreased agricultural land.

Informal activities are regular companion of rapid urban growth in the Global South. The informal economy represents a major share of the GDP in many countries. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss about informal economic activities in the residential area of a megacity and analyze their spatial characteristics and socioeconomic dimensions. A case study was conducted in Mirpur Area of Dhaka City. The number and types of existing neighborhood retailing and their spatial location and size were identified by observation survey. There are 139 immobile neighborhood retailers or street vendors and hourly average 87 mobile street vendors observed. Fifty of those different neighborhood retailers or street vendors were randomly selected using stratified sampling technique for detailed questionnaire survey for socioeconomic analysis. The existing neighborhood retailing activities in the study area are of diverse nature and type with different size, employ many people and regularly serving a large number of people in the study location. Based on the results, some suggestions-policy guidelines and measures related to informal economic activities within the residential areas in Dhaka city-are provided. Findings of this paper would be helpful for similar areas of the city or similar other cities.

The geographical location and development of Bangladesh means that the country is vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Cyclones are becoming more frequent and severe due to the effects of climate change [1]. Since 2007, more than 5000 people have died, and damage runs into billions of dollars due to cyclones. This study aims to conduct an assessment of early preparation measures on cyclonic events since the 1970s with an emphasis on cyclone Amphan, May 2020 in Bangladesh. The study adopted a desk-based systematic survey of secondary literature. Technological advancement and better communication improve early warning significantly. However, the results show that the disaster preparedness to reduce the effect of cyclonic disaster has many limitations which need to be addressed, particularly by (i) involvement of mosques’ Imams (leaders) and school teachers in warning dissemination management since they are the most respected people in the society and, (ii) awareness of, and improved confidence in early warning and evacuation orders with (iii) gender issues addressed to facilitate equality in decision making. The quantity and quality of cyclone shelters need to be improved to ensure sufficient space. There appears to be a role for security forces in the emergency evacuation process as they have proven effective during Covid-19, where they were deployed to ensure that citizens did not leave home unnecessarily, which minimized the death toll. Continuous review and research on disaster risk reduction needs to be conducted, at all stages of cyclonic disaster management as increased severity and frequency of cyclones unavoidable for Bangladesh.