News

After a long break of field activities due to COVID19 impacts, the DECIDER project successfully carried out a major field campaign at Ho Chi Minh City in October, 2022.

The field campaign started with a half day excursion on to several selected flood sites and sluicegates in HCMC. The group of 12 people including German researchers and local partners first went to the Dien Bien Phu street at District Binh Thanh. Especially, the Alley 27 is a main flooded place with serious water pollution and living wastes in the stream Rach Cau Bong. The excursion continued at the Binh Thanh peninsula where the river banks were elevated to prevent floods. Two sluicegates were also visited. The one near Aqua Park and Phu My street is in well operation and helps block high tide from the SaiGon River to the inner city channels. The sluicegate at Phu Dinh is a big project that is still under construction together with renovations of the nearby river banks of Kenh Doi.

Members of the DECIDER consortium met on 04 October at the local partner Southern Institute of Water Resources Research (SIWRR) for a project internal meeting. Partners exchanged current progresses of the project, discussed the following up Household survey, the next day’s stakeholder meeting and meeting with HCMC People’s Committee, planned for organizing a session in the EGU congress 2023 and a trip of the Vietnamese delegation to Germany, as well as the possibilities of holding a final project meeting in 2023.

On Thursday the 05 October, the formal stakeholder meeting was hold in the Office building of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) in HCMC. The meeting started with presentations of the project progresses and results. Stakeholders were active asking questions and making comments on the project work, where the hydrological model and urban structure studies attracted most interests from the audiences. The second part of the meeting focused particularly on the Decision Support Tool (DST) that is a unique joint product of the project. Through instant participant feedback and also color-cards collection, we received lots of valuable comments and suggestions that will help the project to further improve the DST to meet local needs.

Representatives of the DECIDER consortium visited the People’s Committee of HCMC on Friday morning. Thanks to the reception of the Infrastructure Management Center at the Department of Construction, the fruitful meeting was carried out covering several key aspects of:

• Data and information exchange regarding urban development plan, major strategies and big projects in HCMC
• Future flood risk and options for risk reduction in HCMC
• The practical needs regarding a decision support tool
• The status and technical details of the planned ring dike (if publicly available) and “softer” alternatives like rainwater detention on a district level.
• More detailed Urban Structure Types based on remote sensing and LiDAR data.

Beyond the formal meetings, the project partners also met and discussed various research questions and cooperation potentials in bilateral meetings, separate field tours, institute visits, and also took data verification measurements on site, etc. After the meetings, a following up household survey will be carried out by our partner South Institute of Social Sciences (SISS) in HCMC in October and November, which aims to establish a longitudinal database for analyzing flood risk and damage dynamics.