Flood risk analysis and spatial flood risk assessment for Vietnam

Vietnam has been extensively impacted by flooding historically, sustaining heavy losses in human life, and damage to housing, agriculture, water resources, and transportation. Although the Vietnamese government has focussed on physical measures of flood defence such as dykes and early warning systems, the country still lacks flood risk assessment tools and methodologies developed at national and local levels, and holistic flood risk management (FRM) frameworks. In this research, Vietnam’s national disaster database was first sourced, and the data was collected and analysed to examine the flood risk of Vietnam’s regions and provinces by using a new approach, multi-criteria decision techniques and statistical analysis. Second, the study investigated the flood fatalities in Vietnam by using statistical machine learning techniques and the national disaster database. Third, the study developed a novel flood risk assessment model that can rapidly create a flood risk map for a local scale by using spatial multi-criteria decision analysis and historical flood mark data. Fourth, FRM activities were investigated via in-depth interviews with decision makers FRM at the provincial, district, and commune levels in Quang Nam province, along with the legal and institutional frameworks. The results have been published in several high ranking peer-reviewed journals. The key findings have led to recommendations for flood risk evaluation at the national level, flood fatality analysis, spatial multi-criteria decision analysis for flood hazard and flood risk assessments, and investigation of FRM approaches from legal and institutional frameworks to practice at local levels. This research project has broad implications for future efforts to mitigate flooding in Vietnam.