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Every river dam activity has definite beneficial effects but cannot circumvent its negative impact in the long run. The Panchet dam has been commissioned as a multipurpose river valley project under the authority of Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) across the river Damodar at the border of West Bengal and Jharkhand states of India in 1959 to overcome some problems like flood control, supply of irrigation, domestic and industrial water, hydroelectric power generation etc. But it has now become a threat to the surrounding people, due to rapid sedimentation and reduction in its water holding capacity. Human risk assessment of the dam thus claims importance and such an effort is executed in this work using Delphi Questionnaire and two Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods viz. Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS). At first 9 human risk alternatives (A1-A9) of the dam are identified using Delphi Questionnaire and rated them in order to prioritize using TOPSIS and WASPAS methods. Risk prioritization results of TOPSIS and WASPAS show somewhat differences. The integrated ‘Mean-Rank’ method is applied to provide final priority ranking of the risk alternatives and the result is: A3 > A9 > A8 > A4, A6 > A1 > A7 > A5 > A2 (when WASPAS parameter λ = 0); A3 > A9 > A4, A8 > A2 > A6 > A1 > A5, A7 (when WASPAS parameter λ = 1); A3 > A9 > A8 > A4, A6 > A1 > A2 > A5 > A7 (when WASPAS parameter λ = 0.5). In all cases, A3 (Population Displacement) alternative ranks first and is identified as the top most risk prone alternative among all. The risk of displacement of people due to further inundation of land is rising gradually. This has motivated us for assessment of other human risks of the dam in the work.

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Developing countries of the world encounter urbanisation and infrastructural development in or around the fertile tracts and the absence of any landuse plan for desired landuse change has led to conversion of farmlands, which is detrimental to future food security and environmental quality. Hugli district is traditionally well known as one of the most prosperous agricultural regions of West Bengal, but the district is experiencing rapid urban extension and infrastructural development towards productive agricultural land since 1991. This has caused decline in the amount of agricultural production, which may be treated as an indicator of increasing threat to the long run sustainable livelihood security of the people of the whole of West Bengal. This article critically explores the transformation of agricultural (farm) land because of growing rate of urbanisation and infrastructural development, which in turn poses the question of threat to food (in) security. Although, this is a growing problem across the universe, this article probes the future food security questions of Hugli district, West Bengal by examining the impact of the highly intertwined indicators of urbanisation and infrastructural development on agricultural (farm) landuse and its effect on food security. Regression Analysis, Spearman's Ranking Correlation Coefficient, Remote Sensing Technologies, Markov Chain Model, Projection of Future Population Growth, and Yield Rate are employed to understand the depth of the problem. The result not only shows a direct negative correlation between urban extension and agricultural areal contraction but also the supervised classification of satellite imageries shows that there is ra pid change of rural landuse from 1996-2016. There is no match between future population growth and future yield rate of crops and the Markov Chain Model further predicts that the cropland will decrease from 62.77% to 42.90% and the built up area will increase from 31.86% to 54.63% of the total area from 2016 to 2056.

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