Willingdon Island is the largest artificial island in India, which forms part of the city of Kochi, in the state of Kerala. Much of the present Willingdon Island was claimed from the Vembanadu Lake, filling in dredged soil around a previously existing, but tiny, natural island. Willingdon Island is significant as the home for the Port of Kochi as well as the Kochi Naval Base, the Southern Naval Command of the Indian Navy, Plant Quarantine station, Custom House Cochin and Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, a constituent unit of Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

Kochi, also known by its former name Cochin, is a major port city along the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of Kerala. The city is also commonly referred to as Ernakulam. As of 2011, the Kochi Municipal Corporation had a population of 677,381 over an area of 94.88 km2, and the larger Kochi urban agglomeration had over 2.1 million inhabitants within an area of 440 km2, making it the largest and the most populous metropolitan area in Kerala. Kochi city is also part of the Greater Cochin development region and is classified as a Tier-II city by the Government of India. The civic body that governs the city is the Kochi Municipal Corporation, which was constituted in the year 1967, and the statutory bodies that oversee its development are the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) and the Goshree Islands Development Authority (GIDA).