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Integrated planning is one of the key elements of resilience and sustainable development. Yet, it has been highlighted consistently as one of the weaknesses in the governance system of Vietnam, especially over the last few decades with regards to city planning and development in the context of climate change. Vietnam has been urbanizing and developing rapidly, but unfortunately is not yet able to realize its full potentials due to economic and social setbacks caused by the damages of flooding, erosion, storms and other ‘natural’ hazards. One of the main reasons is that the urban planning and development process did not give proper consideration to the current and potential impacts of climate change and the critical role of specific areas and their physical features in alleviating them. During the last decade of working in Vietnam, ISET has come across recurrent examples, including those in Da Nang, Quy Nhon, Can Tho, Lao Cai, Hue, and many other cities, that resonate this reality. Under the Vietnam National Engagement and Extension of Resilience Practice Project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, ISET worked with the Vietnam Urban Planning and Development Association (VUPDA) in an effort to highlight and address this issue. This joint effort focuses on accelerating and sustaining the development of knowledge and capacity of urban professionals in urban climate change resilience through developing and delivering training courses focusing on the integration climate change adaptation into their professional work. Part of this collaborative work include the development of case studies that highlight this gap and describe how it plays out in specific cities in different regions of Vietnam. Two of these case studies (the ones for Lao Cai and Can Tho cities) are presented in the documents below. The case studies were used as reading materials, and as the basis for in-depth exercises and discussion’s in the training courses, which were organized by a team of ISET and VUPDA in six cities in Vietnam (Lao Cai, Hanoi, Da Nang, Da Lat, Ho Chi Minh, and Can Tho) from 2014 to 2015.

Congratulations to Dr. Tran Van Giai Phong, who recently started a position as the Vietnam National Programme Officer for the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Switzerland (SECO). Dr. Tran served as lead to ISET-Vietnam’s projects in urban resilience for a decade and has contributed greatly to the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network in Vietnam, among many other projects. We at ISET wish Dr. Tran great success and look forward to collaborating with him in the future.

Photo by the South Carolina National Guard. Accessed from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/scguard/29983777427 ISET-International researchers will conduct a Post Event Review (PERC) on Hurricane Florence, which struck the Southern United States in September 2018 and caused more than $1 billion in damages. This research is focused on understanding why a hazard became a disaster and identifying opportunities for building resilience. This research will be conducted as part of ISET’s participation in the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, which focuses on “finding practical ways to help communities … strengthen their resilience to flood risk”.

ISET-International recently entered an MoU with the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI). ISET will collaborate with ADRI to research the impact of climate change on water, agriculture, health, air quality, and economic productivity as well as climate finance. Our collaboration will begin in Bihar, India, a state where water crisis may be a reality by the year 2030, explained Prof. A K Ghosh, Chairman of the Bihar State Pollution Control Board. Bihar is a strategic starting point for research because of its location in Eastern India, an area where people rely heavily on environmental resources, and where climate change threatens unrelenting heat in the decades to come. The combination of these two factors suggests planning for climate change adaptation, especially adaptive water management, is crucial for the resilience of local populations. Mr. Shashikant Chopde, an ISET Senior Research Associate, reports that collaborative research will focus on developing a risk atlas and approaches for water auditing. Together with ADRI, ISET aspires to generate research that is relevant not only in Bihar and India, but across Asia. During the signing of the MoU, Dr. Shaibal Gupta, Member Secretary of ADRI, reported that “Bihar has the potential to become the model for other (Indian) states on Climate Change Adaptation”.

To be resilient requires the flexibility to elegantly and successfully plan for the unknown and respond to the unexpected. But bravely going where no man has gone before is … fraught with challenge. Not everything we try is successful. Which means that, as the resilience community experiments with building resilience, some of our educated guesses about promising avenues won’t pan out. If we want to move the study and practice of resilience forward quickly, we need to share, learn from, and modify our practice on the basis of these lessons. The second round of Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) Water Windows projects closed at the end of June 2018. This past week, the 12 grantees — supported and accompanied by the Z Zurich Foundation, as the funder of the Water Windows call, and the Global Resilience Partnership staff — met in Kathmandu to share successes and lessons from their projects. The Water Windows projects are an inspiring and diverse collection of activities across a broad range of contexts and disciplines. However, though there was much to learn from the project successes, the lessons from what didn’t work were far richer. FAILure – First Attempt In Learning The most interesting FAILures to come out of the Water Windows work can be grouped into three areas: 1. Expert engagement Bringing in experts is integral to almost all resilience work – we’re pushing the boundaries of both what we know and of previous engagement. But if you don’t have the expertise, how do you assess someone else’s? Two of the projects – both delivered by organizations with years of experience, long-standing relationships in the countries where they were working, and strong track records of excellent work – highlight the subtle challenges experts pose. One project brought in flood modelers to conduct an analysis. The results were used to determine where in the communities to place flood markers, though the community suggested different locations. Subsequent flooding validated the community; the flood markers were in the wrong place. In the second project, a component of the work focused on engaging the private sector in flood resilience efforts. In retrospect, the project staff believe they would have seen better results if they’d brought in private sector experts to support that engagement. In hind sight, it easy to say “we should have trusted the community over the experts” or “we should have brought in people with the expertise we didn’t have”, but if you look for a bit at those two statements you realize they contradict one another. Clearly, in bringing in experts, we need to be solidly grounded in both what we know and hold expertise around, and what we don’t know and need help with. At the same time, we need, somehow, to assess the ‘expertise’ of people in fields we don’t hold expertise in, or at least be willing to critically assess and reject that expertise if we don’t think it’s going to move things forward effectively. 2. Technology Technology is another trap we fall into in our resilience work. ISET, in our work (see project blog), supported our project participants to develop a strategic assessment model to explore trade-offs in river basin water operations. What we failed to recognize was that none of our stakeholders had a mandate to do strategic planning. Consequently, they were disappointed when the model couldn’t support operations and the resulting engagement and use of the model was poor. Another project introduced an app to provide flood warning information. They had similar challenges with uptake – their stakeholders were more interested in using the app to support day-to-day community activities. Yet in both cases, the technology did find users — not the ones we’d hoped, and the usage wasn’t what we’d anticipated, but perhaps that’s ok. We aimed a little too high, but we’ve planted seeds. Next time, we know to spend more time understanding the demand for our technology before we create it, or in building capacity around using it the way we think it can be most beneficial. 3. Using project results The third set of FAILures focus on how we assess resilience and what we do with that information. One project brought in researchers to conduct extensive resilience measurement work. However, though the researchers tried to produce something that could be used by the implementors, it was still too theoretical to be actionable. Another project created policy reports for use in advocacy and influence. Lack of participatory consultation with the target governments led to ineffective reports. A third project created an elegant documentary based on their work, but failed to really consider the needs of their target audience. The result was a pretty, shiny output that the stakeholders didn’t use. If we want to move resilience thinking and implementation forward at all, let alone if we want to do that quickly, we need to get much better about how we learn from and share the learning from our work. Project design needs to include strategic consideration of how we will use the project results… or failures. Whatever results we get, we need to identify an audience for those results and use the right language and communications approaches to get them into the right hands. Celebrating Failure The Global Resilience Partnership and Zurich made a point of pushing us, their grantees, to share with them and with one another not just our successes — which are always easy to talk about — but also our failures. All of the grantees at the meeting did so – openly, transparently — and it moved all of us forward, donors and grantees alike. But it requires trust, humility, and good faith on the part of the grantees, which in turn requires openness and transparency on the part of donors. It also requires donors who create a safe space, who provide repeated encouragement, and who have a true interest in hearing about and celebrating the failures. By doing this, GRP and Zurich have created a truly innovative program – one that has more than doubled its learning with one small shift. For more information on the Global Resilience Partnership, the Z Zurich Foundation, and Water Window grantees, check out their websites: Global Resilience Partnership Z Zurich Foundation Project on Creating a Participatory Platform for Flood Risk Management Across Two Provinces in Central Vietnam, ISET-International: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/institute-for-social-and-environmental-transition-international-iset/ Project on Development of Amphibious Homes for Marginalized and Vulnerable Populations in Vietnam, from the University of Waterloo: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/university-of-waterloo/ Project on Ecology and Gender Based Flood Resilience Building in Thua Thien Hue,Central Vietnam (ResilNam), from the University of Potsdam: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/university-of-potsdam-urban/ Project on Ecology and Gender Based Flood Resilience Building in Thua Thien Hue,Central Vietnam (ResilNam), University of Potsdam: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/university-of-potsdam-coastal/ Project on Building the resilience of vulnerable coastal communities against floods in Sri Lanka, by Seacology: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/seacology/ Project on Agricultural and Water Resilience in Coastal Areas of Bangladesh, by Practical Action: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/practical-action/ Project on combating flood risk in the Philippines, by One Architecture: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/one-architecture/ Project on Roads to the Rescue in Bangladesh, by MetaMeta: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/metameta/ Project on Trans-boundary Flood Risk Mitigation through Governance and Innovative Information Technology, by Mercy Corps: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/mercy-corps/ Project on Nepal-India Trans-Boundary Resilience, by Lutheran World Relief: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/lutheran-world-relief-lwr/ Project on Community Flood Resilience in north-western Kenya, by Danish Refugee Council: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/danish-refugee-council-drc/ Project on Community-led holistic innovations for flood resilience in Bangladesh, by The Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Research (C3ER) and BRAC University: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/teams/the-centre-for-climate-change-and-environmental-research-c3er-brac-university/

The National Institute of Disaster Management, India, recently signed an MoU with ISET-International and the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group to collaborate on disaster management. This unique partnership strives towards achieving progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Paris Agreement within India. Our collaboration will involve multiple-sector, multiple-scale and multi-hazard research. In addition, we will contribute in the form of capacity building and policy inputs. In the past these three organizations have worked together to create some informative products on the theme of Disaster Risk Reduction in various parts of India:

On August 31, 2018, a UCR-CoP event was organized in Hanoi, with the participation of about 30 participants from UDA, Can Tho CRO, 100RC, GIZ, SECO, ISET, and other CoP members. The workshop focused on the topic of integrating resilience thinking into urban development, specifically aiming to share and discuss the challenges in applying resilience thinking in urban development in general, and through the specific experiences and lessons related to green infrastructure development in Can Tho City under the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) program. It was also an opportunity for members to share and discuss the experience and results of their resilience projects, as well as their upcoming plans. Overview of the workshop. Photo: ISET-Vietnam There were three presentations delivered at the workshop: 1. GIZ project result updates – Presentation by Dr. Tim McGrath, GIZ Dr. McGrath provided an update on GIZ’s activities in the last period, which include: project with UDA on indicators and criteria for urban resilience in Vietnam; project with SECO to support UA on drafting of the new Urban Development and Management Law; and recent publications of GIZ on climate resilience in Vietnam. Dr. Tim McGrath (GIZ) giving his presentation. Photo: ISET-Vietnam Many participants were very interested in the indicator development process, and on how the results of different indicator projects can be effectively coordinated and integrated into the law making process that UDA is leading. 2. Resilience thinking and challenges in applying resilience thinking in urban development – Presentation by Dr. Vu Canh Toan, ISET-Vietnam Dr. Toan introduced the resilience planning applied by ISET, which includes establishing a local team; stakeholder engagement; identification of shocks and stresses; overview resilience assessment based on the city resilience framework (with 4 dimensions: health and wellbeing; economy and society, infrastructure and environment, leadership and strategies); in-depth analysis of focus areas and opportunity assessment; identify priority actions; and implementation, and emphasized that this is not a one-off but an iterative process. Dr. Vu Canh Toan (ISET-Vietnam) delivering his persentation. Photo: ISET-Vietnam He also raised thought-provoking observations on statements of challenges in the resilience planning process, and pointed out how these challenges should be analyzed more in-depth and from new angles. For example, statements of the lack of capacity as a challenge often only refer to technical capacity, and fails to recognize other capacity needs, such as capacity to engage and mobilize stakeholders. It is also important to clarify for whom should the capacity be built, as the need to build capacity and understanding of leaders are often ignored, while they are the ones who have the authority and commitment to take actions and the power to make decisions. In addition, the challenge with lack of information is often quoted. But again, Dr. Toan pointed out, however massive the information we have, it is never enough. Yet, in many cases, available information is not used even when there is a legal requirement to do so. Dr. Toan also mentioned the need to addressing the lack of coordination, using example of ISET’s support to establish Climate Change Coordination Office for Can Tho, Da Nang and Binh Dinh provinces under the ACCCRN program. However, there are tremendous challenges in how the coordination agencies can play active roles and maintain their place in the planning process in their cities. Finally, he also agreed that the lack of financial resources is evident, but emphasized that we can do many things with less money (quoting the examples of biological measures to address riverbank erosion in Cai Son river, Can Tho city, and biological embankment of the Thu Bon river adopted by the city of Hoi An). Moreover, more money does not always mean more resilience (maladaptation: example of new/elevated dyke in Quy Nhon – 300 billion VND, which made flooding worse for the city). Dr. Tran Thi Lan Anh, Urban Development Agency, Ministry of Construction speaking at the workshop. Photo: ISET-Vietnam The CoP participants discussed eagerly about the critical roles of decision-makers in the urban development process, and agreed that the process needs to be transparent to be effective. However, they also recognized the fact that there will always be uncertainty and no amount of information is enough, and taking actions based on available information now is at least useful to some extent. 3. Experience of applying resilience thinking in urban development in Can Tho: Green Infrastructure (GI) planning for urban flood resilience – Presentation by Dr. Nguyen Hieu Trung, Can Tho City Resilience Office Dr. Trung shared the experience of Can Tho under the 100RC program. With the guiding framework that provides health and wellbeing; economy and society, infrastructure and environment, leadership and strategies as four broad areas of action, Can Tho did an assessment and came up with four discovery areas: Dr. Nguyen Hieu Trung, Chief Resilience Officer of Can Tho City in his presentation. Photo: ISET-Vietnam Health & Wellbeing: build resilience capacity for the most disadvantaged groups (most vulnerable to the identified shocks and stresses) – poverty reduction Economy & Society: assess the value chain of key products of Can Tho, identify sections in the value chain that needs support in building resilience Infrastructure & Environment: develop measures to strengthen green infrastructure in a pilot area in the city Leadership & Strategy (related to all 3 areas above): to strengthen coordination for resilience building in the city. Related to the green infrastructure component in particular, the working group in Ca Tho used historical maps, combined with satellite images do conduct a high level analysis, which shows that many parts of the historical canal system of Can Tho had been filled, and a significant reduction in green areas in the city compared to how it was a few decades ago. Green infrastructure measures a needed to counter/mitigate the expected harmful effects of the above processes. Green infrastructure measures can help absorb water and reduce discharge into the sewage system. So we identified four sub-drainage units in the city as potential areas to pilot green infrastructure measures, and will select among them one area for a demonstration project, where we will apply Tactical Urbanism measures for green infrastructure development. The Can Tho example demonstrates the importance of resilience thinking in designing, implementing and communicating about adaptive measures. There is always a certain level of uncertainty with any protective infrastructure construction. The resilience thinking mindset helps to prepare stakeholders for the case of safe failure, making that when some infrastructure does fail, it does so in a safe way. Green infrastructure measures provide no regret options that can help to reduce the adverse side effects of hard infrastructure measures, and a way to support their safe failures. Ms. Gemma Kyle, Program Manager, Asia & Pacific, City Resilience Delivery, 100RC asking question at the workshop. Photo: ISET-Vietnam As a common practice in all CoP event, all participants were given opportunity at the end to share with the workshop their organization/ their own plans of activities for the coming periods, and any opportunity to collaborate/join efforts with the other CoP members. The Asia Foundation, SECO, AFD, ISET, UDA, 100RC and other individual participants all took this opportunity to share about their exciting work plans with the workshop. All CoP participants received the detailed notes of the workshop together with a copy of the presentations. Please subscribe to the URC-CoP mailing list or emailed us with the request to avoid missing out information about our upcoming events.

ISET is proud to be part of the next phase of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, a five year commitment to promoting preventive action and flood resilience. The Zurich Insurance Group and the Z-Zurich Foundation launched their flood resilience initiative in 2012 as a way to apply the risk mitigation expertise of their specialists to the challenge of improving flood resilience worldwide. This private-sector organization teamed up with research institutes and NGOs and in 2014 won the well-recognized UNFCCC Lighthouse Activity award for their unique approach to flood resilience. Today, the program is helping more than 100 communities in nine program countries build resilience against flooding. This new phase of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance aims to replicate and expand previous efforts. More information can be found at www.zurich.com/en/sustainability/flood-resilience/. Participating NGOs and humanitarian organizations include: International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Mercy Corps, Plan International, Concern, and Practical Action. ISET-International will serve as a research partner alongside the Institute for Applied Systems and Analysis (IIASA) and the London School of Economics. You can read more on ISET’s collaboration with the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance in these publications: Prioritizing Recovery Spending: Lessons from the 2017 Peru Floods/Estableciendo prioridades para las inversiones de reconstrucción: Documento breve de Política The PERC Manual Learning From Disasters to Build Resilience: A Simple Guide to Conducting a Post Event Review A Post-Event Review of the October 2015 Floods in South Carolina: A Deep Dive into the Columbia and Charleston Areas Urgent case for recovery: what we can learn from the August 2014 Karnali River floods in Nepal To receive news on our blogs and publications, sign up for the ISET monthly newsletter here.

Dr. MacClune has worked at ISET-International since 2008 when she and fellow scientist, co-worker, and husband Kenneth MacClune established ISET’s Hanoi office as a hub for the Rockefeller Foundation Asian CIties Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) and USAID Mekong - Building Resilience to Climate Change in Asian Cities (M-BRACE) programs in Vietnam. Since then, Dr. MacClune has worked with ISET on projects around the world, most recently in Vietnam, Peru, Nepal, and the United States. In this work, Dr. MacClune has conducted post-flood forensic analyses, served as scientific advisor for flood and water operations modeling, developed training materials for and facilitated resilience building projects, and built capacity of decision-makers and practitioners on how to design their communities for a future of uncertainty. An ongoing theme throughout her work is the combination of technical analysis with stakeholder outreach, discussion and process facilitation in support of planning and policies for climate change adaptation. After graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Mathematics, Dr. MacClune earned her doctorate in Geophysics with a focus on Hydrology from the University of Colorado. Her graduate work combined micro-meteorology and hydrology of the Antarctic Dry Valleys with some of the first high resolution imagery of the Martian polar caps from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. Dr. MacClune’s expertise in hydrology, 25 years working within the field of climate change adaptation and resilience, and her passion for integrating learning across disciplines, scales and cultures makes her uniquely qualified to lead ISET-International into a new phase of collaboration with the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance. The daughter of an editor and a mathematician, Dr. MacClune has a special talent for communicating scientific information with journalistic flair. Below are a few of her contributions to the study and application of climate change adaptation and resilience: Collaborative and Equitable Urban Citizen Science - Chapter 12 of Urban Planet: Knowledge Towards Sustainable Cities After the Flood Is Before the Next Flood - Chapter 10 of the The Post‐Event Review Capability Methodology To get monthly news from ISET, sign up for our newsletter here.

An Instruction Handbook for Community-Level Resilience Building ISET, in collaboration with the American Red Cross, has produced a handbook that is designed for individuals and groups looking to host community resilience-building events. It is easy to read and has plentiful visuals to help organizers communicate resilience-building concepts to the general public. Our goal was to create a handbook that could be used by people hoping to help their communities become more resilient, even if they don’t have a theoretical background in community resilience-building or a lot of money to fund such efforts. This toolkit was piloted in Vanuatu and Indonesia, within urban communities vulnerable to climate change. Through our collaboration with the American Red Cross, an organization that works with hundreds of communities all over the world, we hope that this instruction handbook will help many different communities increase their resilience and become more prepared to face disasters. You can view the handbook here: Do It Together Toolkit for Building Urban Community Resilience Why community-level resilience? Community level intervention allows for NGOs to meet directly with the most vulnerable communities. Because disasters are devastating for impoverished communities (1), NGOs and programs working to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience should consider intervening directly at the community level. Community-level intervention offers more flexibility than state or national level interventions, which can often be too formal and ridged in their approach. Scaling Up Successful Community Projects to State, Regional, and National Levels Once successful strategies of intervention are achieved at the community-level, then efforts can be expanded to the state and national levels. This is where coalition building can be very useful: local organizations are great for working at the community level but when scaling up it is beneficial for them to forge partnerships with organizations that work at the city, state, national, and global level. “…extensive research over the past 30 years has revealed that it is generally the poor who tend to suffer worst from disasters (DFID, 2004; Twigg, 2004; Wisner et al., 2004; UNISDR, 2009b). Impoverished people are more likely to live in hazard-exposed areas and are less able to invest in risk-reducing measures. The lack of access to insurance and social protection means that people in poverty are often forced to use their already limited assets to buffer disaster losses, which drives them into further poverty. Poverty is therefore both a cause and consequence of disaster risk (Wisner et al., 2004)”

By Karen MacClune, Kanmani Venkateswaran, and Rachel Norton Photo by Harris County Flood Control District The illusion of protection Flood protection infrastructure alone does not, and cannot, mitigate flood risk. Every post event flood review (PERC) conducted by the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance contains examples of flood protection infrastructure that has incentivized bad behavior and/or failed catastrophically during floods. The response to these failures is often to allocate large sums of recovery funding to construct more protective infrastructure without asking why there was failure in the first place. Even within the disaster risk management and disaster risk reduction communities, there seems to be unquestioned faith in the ability of protection infrastructure to protect people. Our newest post-event review, of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas (planned for release June 21 2018), looks closely at some of the issues with flood protection infrastructure and provides clear ways forward to develop smarter infrastructure that will support greater flood resilience. Hurricane Harvey in Houston Houston is highly flood prone. The Houston metro area has experienced three greater-than-100-year floods in the last five years alone, with the third being Hurricane Harvey. Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas on August 25, 2017. Over the next four days Harvey dropped more than 40 inches of rain over eastern Texas. The resulting floods inundated hundreds of thousands of homes, forced more than 30,000 people into shelters and prompted more than 17,000 rescues. Total damage is estimated at USD 125 billion, making it the second-costliest tropical cyclone on record after Hurricane Katrina. Harvey broke nearly all of the continental US rainfall records. So it is understandable that it overwhelmed drainage systems, caused overbank flooding, and prompted emergency releases from all water storage and flood control reservoirs in the greater Houston area. What is concerning, however, is that over 9000 homes and businesses were badly flooded because they were located within river floodways, flood control reservoirs, and emergency release areas. Furthermore, home and business owners lost assets and property in spite of the fact that the filling of the reservoirs and emergency releases were relatively predictable and entirely forecastable. Missed opportunities for mitigation This highlights how disasters are anything but natural — there is an enormous man-made component. There were numerous points at which these impacts could have been mitigated: When land was initially purchased for Houston’s two flood control reservoirs, but the dams were sized to impound water beyond the boundaries of the purchased land; When construction of homes and businesses within the reservoirs and their delineated floodways was approved in the 1990s/2000s, despite knowing they would be flooded if the reservoirs were to fill; When those homes were sold without adequate disclosure to either real estate agents or buyers regarding the risk; When areas upstream of the reservoirs were permitted for development, contributing to increased upstream runoff; When flood maps were developed and disseminated by county and national authorities that failed to show the full potential extent of flood risk; When authorities failed to evaluate, well in advance of an event, the possible impacts of floodwater within the reservoir and of emergency releases downstream, so they would be prepared to warn residents at risk; When, as the reservoirs began to fill rapidly during Harvey, the potential for in-reservoir and downstream flooding was not immediately communicated to the public with warnings to protect their assets. Many homes and businesses inside the reservoirs were in fact unaware that they were located in a flood zone. “When I started to rent this house, nobody told me, Even the insurance company told me that it was not a flooding area.” — Jeremy Boutor, Addicks Reservoir resident This list is not exhaustive, yet it points to just how broad responsibility often is and how many opportunities there are for protection infrastructure to fail. Interestingly, none of these modes address physical failure caused by design thresholds being overwhelmed and/or a lack of maintenance, though that has also been a recurring theme in Alliance PERC studies. Instead, this example highlights the ways in which simply building and maintaining flood protection infrastructure is not enough. Ensuring the integrity, functionality, and operability of flood protection infrastructure also requires substantial efforts to develop appropriate regulatory systems and build public awareness of the risk landscape. Learning from the past: mix the hard with the soft In the post-Harvey recovery phase, a leading solution being proposed to address flooding in Houston is the construction of a third reservoir. This is expected to cost over USD 500 million. However, there has been little discussion of the regulatory landscape that gave rise to the flooding at the existing two reservoirs. Unless the issues revealed by Harvey are addressed, a third reservoir is also likely to eventually fail. Large-scale infrastructure projects — such as levees, canals and reservoirs — are expensive yet arguably important solutions to flood threats to development. However, it must be highlighted that these threats are substantially caused by the development itself, both in how and where it is built. In addition, all flood protection infrastructures come with residual risk and storm thresholds beyond which they will fail. Protecting these investments and dependent lives and assets requires parallel investments in soft solutions based on an understanding of how people interact with protection infrastructure.

Overview and takeaway points: In 2011, the Da Nang Woman’s Union started a program to help low income families fortify their houses, so that when typhoons and flooding occured, these households will be more prepared. Often a house is the single most valuable asset a family owns, and they can suffer great economic loss if that house is damaged in a typhoon or flood, both of which occur frequently in Da Nang. ISET senior scientists, in collaboration with Hue University, have conducted a survey to investigate the effectiveness of this resilient-housing project, along with similar projects initiated by other NGOs and local governments. This Rapid Assessment Survey concluded that: Some survey participants indicated that because they now have more secure housing, their adult children feel more comfortable sending home money for other investments – for example computers. This assessment survey has indicated that, helping the poor in housing improvement is a multi-dimensional approach that requires both financial support and technical and institutional assistances. Both financial and technical input is needed to fully support households in building climate-resilient houses. Housing reconstruction initiatives are more attractive to local households if they are given the opportunity to reuse and recycle some building material, thus bringing down the total cost of rebuilding or fortifying their house. Resilient housing initiatives conducted by NGOS offered participants more flexibility than government resilient housing initiatives. (NGO initiatives allow households to recycle some housing material, while government initiatives were more rigid in their building requirements.) While local-level governments had created good policies for supporting local people in fortifying their housing, this information was not widely known or utilized by NGO-led housing initiatives. In some cases, organizations encouraged but did not require participants to follow safety measures in housing construction. This means that some local households who participate in the housing fortification credit schemes could still be at-risk to future climate hazards. Some households who wanted to participate in the program did not have legal documentation to prove they owned their homes. Some programs were more flexible about demanding legal documentation, which allowed these households to move forward with housing fortification. Participants in the housing fortification programs often received support and help from their inner-circle of relationships. Friends and relatives would often help participants with construction, and, thus, help reduce the labor cost significantly. All the surveyed households feel more secure and prepared for the next rainy and stormy seasons. Full Report: Earlier this month, the ISET team, in collaboration with the Hue University of Economics, conducted a rapid assessment survey to examine the efficiency of storm-resilient houses to the resilience of households and communities. The assessment consisted of two focus group discussions (FGD), 15 participants per group, and six in-depth household interviews, focusing on two climate-exposed wards of Da Nang City, Vinh Trung and Hoa Minh, where the Nordic Development Fund (NDF) has supported poor households for their housing improvement through the Women’s Union channel. The FGDs saw the participation of a wide range of local stakeholders, from the ward people’s committee leadership board, cadastral (land) unit, and fatherland front committee, to women’s union, quarter heads, local builders and beneficiary households. Geographically, Hoa Minh belongs to Lien Chieu District and is next to the sea while Vinh Trung, belonging to Thanh Khe District, is located more inland and closer to the city center. Proportion of poor households in Hoa Minh is higher than in Vinh Trung and nearly 70 % land of Hoa Minh is used for relocation/resettlement purposes while most of residential land in Thanh Khe is the long-standing existing residential areas. Due to being located near the sea, many households in Hoa Minh are highly exposed to typhoon and storm surge and make housing of the poor in Hoa Minh, in general, more vulnerable to climate hazards compared to their counterparts in Vinh Trung. It was found that there is a difference between the governmental and non-governmental housing projects in Da Nang in terms of building safe homes for the poor. In the governmental projects, it is usually not flexible in reusing old elements or materials for newly built houses. This makes the governmental housing projects not attractive to low income people even the amount of grant is higher than other projects such as the NDF project (50 million compared to 30 million VND). In the NDF project, people may reuse the old items (e.g. existing foundation blocks or roof frames) if they are still in good quality to reduce construction cost and minimize their cash contribution, an important aspect to enable and motivate poor households to improve their home. On the other side, if the house is required for new construction, all old materials and elements are not allowed to use in the new house. Therefore, as affirmed by FGD participants, regardless of the amount of grant/subsidy, the attractiveness of housing projects for the poor is also dependent on the flexibility in considering and reusing old materials/elements to reduce construction cost. The important point here is to identify which existing materials or elements can be reused. The FGD in Vinh Trung shows that there is a policy issued by the Thanh Khe district government in 2016 in which poor households are likely to receive free assistance from the district-level urban management department and ward-level cadastral (land) unit in preparing housing design drawing files for applying building permit. Cost of applying building permit may be also exempted for the poor if they are assessed to be extremely difficult without financial capacity, as said by the ward-level cadastral unit representative. It is a good policy to support the poor in improving their homes. However, this policy has been unknown to Women’s Union so that this resource was not mobilized in the NDF project where part of beneficiary households is the poor. Meanwhile, this policy has not been initiated in Lien Chieu District, as deduced from the FGD in Hoa Minh. The above finding indicates that some districts in Da Nang have released good policies to support the poor in upgrading their homes and escaping from poverty. However, the issue of information exchange and sharing at the local levels, particularly amongst local administrative units, are not really effective so that such resources are unknown and, then, unused in recent low-income resilient housing projects. In cases that this resource was utilized, the cost of technical support per household would be reduced and, therefore, the project has more financial resource to invest in other necessary purposes, such as extending the grant size for household, adding more safety-related measures, or purchasing risk/damage insurance. This reduced cost is also significant to safe housing microfinance programs for the poor and low income if preferential credit schemes are initiated in combination with technical assistance. In previous housing projects for the poor, information/guidelines for housing design were usually disseminated to in-need households through quarter heads and local mass organizations such as Women’s Union. In most cases, safety-related measures are encouraged but not required to follow in housing construction. This makes housing of the poor in these two wards particularly and in Da Nang generally still at-risk to future climate hazards. As recommended by the FGD participants, there should be a requirement of using safety-related measures housing construction when financially supporting the poor to ensure that their rebuilt/renovated houses are resilient to the future climate. As said by the homeowners interviewed, there have been not many houses of the poor in their neighborhood built with the inclusion of safety-related measures (i.e. storm shelter inclusion, wall and roof consolidation elements). Explained by them, it is mainly because of lacking fixed technical requirements right from the beginning, lacking easy-to-understand and locally applicable technical guidelines, and lack of specific mechanisms for construction monitoring and quality control during the construction process. The NDF project is the only one project up to now requiring the compulsory use of safety-related standards in housing construction in Thanh Khe District. This is the feature that makes the NDF project different from previous housing projects for the poor within the district area. In previous housing programs, financial aspects were paid more attention than technical ones, even in the areas prone to climate hazards (i.e. typhoon, flood), as said by the district WU representative. In the six surveyed houses built by the NDF project for climate resilience, the most common technical principles used for these houses is (1) the construction of a ‘storm shelter’ by upgrading an existing room inside the house (figure 4), (2) the wall reinforcement by adding reinforced concrete posts and beams inside walls, and (3) the roof protection by anchoring roof frames to the walls underneath and roof covers to roof frames. Within the inclusion of these elements, it generally generates an increase of 15-25% of total construction cost, as stated by the interviewed homeowners. Affirmed by them, these technical principles are easy to understand by local masons and, thus, easy to be incorporated in housing construction if they are trained and advised how to apply in practice. It was also found that there is a portion of poor population in Da Nang who has no formal land document, locally known as the red book (sổ đỏ). This will affect the work of building permit application before undertaking housing construction or renovation. In regulation, building permit is only granted to the land that have the red book. However, there is a flexibility in the building permit granting process to help the poor households without red book be able to get building permit. Specifically, the ward cadastral unit will check the legality of their land, whether its location is conformed to the city/district’s current planning, and grant a written agreement letter to confirm the residential status of the land for reporting to the district urban management department, the body granting building permit. This department will base on this letter to grant building permit for the poor households who have no red book. The support from local governments for the poor is also spreading to other works relating to construction activities. Housing of the poor living in the central business districts such as Thanh Khe is usually located in densely constructed areas with narrow lanes/alleys and the transportation of materials to the site is quite difficult and easy to disturb neighboring households. In some cases, the ward urban rule team, locally called “đội quy tắc đô thị”, will check construction activities and if the transportation of materials affects the public, the household will be fined or, more heavily, stop the construction. However, for the poor groups, the local authority had worked with these urban rule teams to ask their assistance in allowing the construction of poor people’s houses. In addition, the ward fatherland front committee also works with local material shops (e.g. steel, cement, brick sellers)[1] to ask them to offer a cheaper cost for poor people’s housing construction. In most cases, local material shops are willing to offer a lower price than the market price for this group, as said by one ward authority representative. Also, if any poor households want to develop economy alongside housing improvement, the ward authority will work with the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies to ask them to offer preferential loans for people’s livelihood/economic development. The fundamental motto in helping the poor is “to provide them with the fishing-rod rather than fish-product”, as highlighted by Dr Phong Tran, Technical Lead of ISET. The household interviews saw the strong engagement of family members, family’s relatives, and friends in housing construction work. 5 out of 6 houses visited received a ‘free’ labor contribution from the owners’ brothers, sons and relatives and, thus, help reduce the labor cost significantly. All the surveyed households feel more secure in next rainy and stormy seasons since they have a safer home to live and protect their family. Thanks to having a better/more durable accommodation, the family members (e.g. sons, daughters) who have worked in other cities/provinces have sent money back to support their parents in purchasing more valuable items such as TV, computer, fridge, or kitchen appliances. It can be claimed that the overall target of housing support for the poor is not only the provision of the house itself but also the facilitation/enabling of other forms of assistance to fully help the family escape from poverty, improve living conditions and reach a sustainable development. In short, this assessment survey has indicated that, helping the poor in housing improvement is a multi-dimensional approach in which financial support should be incorporated with technical and institutional assistances to fully support them in building climate-resilient houses and, more importantly, sustaining their savings/investment for other wellbeing/development purposes of the family. [1] These shops have been known by the ward fatherland front committee in the previous housing programs with similar helps.