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On March 28, 2018, stakeholders in Dong Ha City, Quang Tri Province gather at the Meeting Hall of the City Fatherland’s Front to kick start a project to replicate the climate change resilient housing model previously implemented in Da Nang City to Dong Ha City. The workshop was organized by the Quang Tri Women’s Union in collaboration with ISET, and attended by the Vice Chairman of Dong Ha City People’s Committee, various city and provincial departments, and representatives of beneficiary wards’ People’s Committees and Women’s Unions. Above: Quang Tri Women’s Union introducing the project to workshop participants. Photo: ISET-Vietnam Intended as a replication of the highly successful model in Da Nang, this project—also sitting under the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation—­­­aims to enhance the resilience of vulnerable wards in Dong Ha City through the establishment of a revolving loan for constructing new flood and storm resistant homes and reinforcing existing weak homes; and build the capacity of the Women’s Unions across levels in Quang Tri to serve as a catalyst for climate change resilience in the province, through activities related to climate change adaptation and community-based risk management, and to support vulnerable households and communities to adapt to climate change. This project will provide low-interest credit loans to poor and near-poor household for house renovation to meet flood and storm resistance standards. This credit fund will be managed by the provincial Women’s Union. The project will be implemented in three wards facing high flood and storm risks and with high poverty rate in Dong Ha City, Dong Giang, Dong Thanh and Dong Luong wards. Above: Workshop discussion. Photo: ISET Over the coming period, ISET’s technical experts and the Quang Tri Women’s Union staff will work closely with households in these three wards to assess their loan eligibility and need, to select households for the credit program, and will closely monitor the construction/renovation process of selected households to be in line with any emergent difficulties faced by the households, and to attend to any additional need of support. The choice between new construction and retrofitting is made by each of the households themselves. In the year 2018, about 30 poor and near-poor households will be selected for the first round of loan disbursement. The program will target both female- and male-headed households, however female-headed households will be prioritized. ISET will provide technical support to the housing component of the project, and build capacity for the Women’s Union across levels on climate change adaptation, resilience housing and credit management, as well as for local construction workers for building houses using storm-resistance technical methods. Lessons and experience from this project will be actively documented and shared for further replication.

ISET, in collaboration with the Zurich Flood Resilience Program and the American Red Cross, is conducting a post-event review (PERC) of the Hurricane Harvey flooding in Houston in August/September 2017. With a focus on businesses, we are looking for examples of where Houston was resilient and how disaster resilience for businesses, communities, and the city as a whole can be improved. Through this engagement, we will be sharing best practices and recommendations with any interested audience. Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas on August 25, 2017 as a Category 4 Hurricane. The storm stalled near the Texas coastline, which caused it to rapidly weaken but also to drop torrential amounts of rainfall over the region. In a four-day period, many areas received more than 40 inches of rain as the system slowly meandered over eastern Texas and adjacent waters, causing catastrophic flooding. Harvey is the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the United States. The resulting floods inundated hundreds of thousands of homes, displaced more than 30,000 people, and prompted more than 17,000 rescues. Hurricane Harvey is also the costliest tropical cyclone on record, nearly doubling the record set by Hurricane Katrina, and is the second-costliest disaster from natural hazards worldwide, behind only the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami. Total damage from the hurricane is estimated at $198 billion. The impacts from this event on businesses was particularly notable. The Gulf Coast is home to about 90 percent of U.S. capacity to turn out base plastics, the building blocks for a wide range of consumer and industrial goods. U.S. industrial output plunged 0.9 percent in August, the most in eight years, mostly because of Hurricane Harvey’s impacts on the oil refining, plastics and chemicals industries. Impacts are expected to continue well beyond the immediate event. This project has been made possible by funding from the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies and the Z Zurich Foundation, and is a collaboration under the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance. Collaborators on this project include the American Red Cross and the Global Disaster Preparedness Center (GDPC). Watch for the Hurricane Harvey Post-Event Review Capability (PERC) report this summer. Meanwhile, we invite you to read about similar post-flooding resilience analysis of events in Nepal, Peru, the U.S.A. and Europe: www.zurich.com/flood-resilience You can read more about ISET’s Post-Event Review Capability (PERC) and its application in Peru, Nepal, and the U.S.A. in these publications: The PERC Manual Learning From Disasters to Build Resilience: A Simple Guide to Conducting a Post Event Review Learning from El Niño Costero 2017: Opportunities for Building Resilience in Peru 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

I am happy to report that we have received approval from Zurich and the Z Zurich Foundation to move the Flood Resilience Alliance into the next stage. While more detail will follow as we come closer to the kick-off of our programs in summer 2018, we can disclose the following: The successes and lessons learnt in the phase 1 tell us that we are on the right track, but more can and needs to be done to build community flood resilience. Following our approach of long-term and flexible funding to focus on problem analysis and innovative solutions to build community flood resilience, the next phase will be another multi-year commitment that we are very excited about. It will give us the opportunity to dive into the topic even more deeply. We are looking forward to working with participating NGOs, including the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Mercy Corps, Plan International and Practical Action as well as research partners International Institute for Applied Systems and Analysis (IIASA), the London School of Economics, the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-International (ISET), and ETH Zurich The resilience measurement framework, a key component of phase 1, will be enhanced and remain a centerpiece of our work, indicating how communities progress in the main dimensions and sources of resilience over time. I believe it is also a critical proof point that NGOs find it attractive to work in this type of alliance – Alliance 2.0, as we call it, will consist of more partner organizations and will help us replicate and scale even faster. With this, we will get closer to our “North Star”, or main ambition, of attracting much more investment into ex-ante prevention actions and resilience building. Until the operational kick off next summer, we have reserved time to thoroughly prepare and plan the next steps ahead. This includes a detailed analysis of all the achievements of phase 1 to ensure we find the best leverage points but also learn where we can still improve. Once this analysis is available we will share on this and other channels to explain how we define and measure success, and how this helps us inform Alliance 2.0. I am extremely proud of this important milestone and of all the fantastic contributions by all our partner organizations – the full team really. You can read more on ISET’s collaboration with the Zurich Insurance Group on flood resilience in these publications: The PERC Manual Learning From Disasters to Build Resilience: A Simple Guide to Conducting a Post Event Review Prioritizing Recovery Spending: Lessons from the 2017 Peru Floods/Estableciendo prioridades para las inversiones de reconstrucción: Documento breve de Política 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 Blog originally posted my Michael Szoenyi at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zurich-flood-resilience-alliance-goes-next-phase-michael-szoenyi?articleId=6359076406324002816#comments-6359076406324002816&trk=prof-post

Over the last few months, the ISET team has worked closely with Can Tho city and the Can Tho 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) team on the idea of promoting green infrastructure in the city. The need for developing green infrastructure came out as a result of the first phase of the 100RC project. Indeed, findings of the Preliminary Resilience Assessment indicate that Can Tho has been facing multiple climate and non-climate related shocks and stresses such as urban flooding, heat waves, water pollution, and lack of green and public spaces. Of these, flooding was considered as one of the most serious. The city is also struggling with the poor enforcement of urban development regulations leading to excessive encroachment of and building on natural water storage areas such as lakes, rivers and canals. This is mainly due to a lack of integrated, demand-oriented and risk-sensitive urban planning practices which are instead fragmented, sector and fix-target oriented. For instance, flood management interventions often rely on the conventional “grey infrastructure“, for example, underground drainage systems that are designed mainly on historical data, fixed and inflexible standards. These approaches have been strongly criticized due to its limitations in building resilience and dealing with conditions of uncertainty that are inherent to future changes including climate change. In this context, green infrastructure emerges as an innovative approach that is proven to be more cost-effective than outmoded models of grey infrastructure and provides multiple benefits for people and the environment. This approach has been applied widely in the US and Europe with the most common application in managing the water cycle. Green infrastructure solutions often combine ecosystems and engineering to provide multiple, instead of single, services to urban citizens. For instance, models of green infrastructure such as green roofs, blue roofs and multifunctional areas including storage, permeable pavement, low-lying parks as flood retention and infiltration ponds, and constructed wetlands can provide multiple benefits, namely reducing water and air pollution, minimizing the impacts of heatwaves, preventing development in wetlands, serving irrigation needs, refilling groundwater, and importantly for Can Tho’s resilience plan, reducing surface runoff and pressure on underground drainage systems and thus flooding risks. Above: The model of the Van Benthem Water Square, Rotterdam was shared by Deltares at the green infrastructure workshop in October. Photo: c40.org Recognizing the multiple challenges that Can Tho is facing, the limitations of the existing planning and flood management practices and the advantage and innovative nature of green infrastructure, the Can Tho 100RC team has identified green infrastructure as one of the four focus areas for the development of the city resilience strategy. However, despite its wide application in western countries, green infrastructure is still a new concept in Vietnam in general and in Can Tho in particular. Thus, ISET has worked closely with the city’s 100RC team to organize and facilitate a series of green infrastructure related events. These included a roundtable discussion as part of Vietnam’s Community of Practice on Urban Climate Resilience (COP-UCR) in September, a green infrastructure workshop funded by the Project Management Unit-Official Development Assistance (PMU-ODA) in October and a number of smaller group discussions with relevant stakeholders. During these events, local stakeholders were introduced to the concepts related to green infrastructure, international examples and experiences in applying green infrastructure. Participants also discussed ideas, opportunities and challenges for the application of green infrastructure in Can Tho. Above: The Roundtable discussion on green infrastructure in September. Insights from these events have been used to develop a detailed plan for further research that will be conducted during phase II of the 100RC effort. This research aims to address key strategic questions that the city of Can Tho would need to have answered to improve the city’s resilience. Findings from this research will serve as an important foundation for the formulation of the City Resilience Strategy. As the Strategy Partner of 100RC in Vietnam, the ISET team will continue to provide technical support to Can Tho in the coming months to implement activities related to green infrastructure as well as other focus areas.

Authors: Kanmani Venkateswaran, Karen MacClune, Adam French ‘Unprecedented’ events and ‘unexpected’ impacts are commonly to blame after major floods and other disasters. While the realities of both disaster risk and climate change are that they are uncertain, many disasters have historical precursors and foreseeable impacts if careful attention is paid to the dimensions of risk including physical hazards and the exposure and vulnerability of people and assets to harm. Building disaster resilience requires learning from both the past and present, and from successes and failures, to prepare for whatever the future may hold—and it’s best not to wait until the next disaster strikes. The PERC approach The Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance developed the post-event review capability (PERC) in 2013 as a means to learn from past flood disasters. The PERC is a disaster forensics study that focuses on why a specific flood event became a disaster and evaluates the success and failures in the management of disaster risk prior to the event, during disaster response, and in post-disaster recovery. PERC studies identify entry points and opportunities for improving disaster risk management and, overall, for building multi-hazard resilience. PERCs have been conducted in rural to urban settings and in both the developing and developed world on four continents. These studies have generated significant interest in their contexts as they provide clear lessons and tangible recommendations for building resilience across sectors and scales. As the PERC library has grown, it is becoming increasingly clear that these studies are identifying lessons and recommendations that are applicable globally. A “non-event” PERC In 2016/2017, the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance conducted its first PERC-based analysis that did not focus on a recent major disaster. Given forecasts in Peru for a severe El Niño event in 2015/2016 likely to generate major coastal flooding, a typical post-event PERC was planned. Yet although the 2015/2016 El Niño was a powerful event globally, it had relatively minor impacts in Peru. IIASA in collaboration with Practical Action Peru decided to proceed with a PERC-inspired study to gain a better understanding of the country’s El Niño-related risks and the effectiveness of the diverse preparedness measures that the Peruvian government pursued prior to the 2015/2016 El Niño. This “non-event” study also analyzed the current Peruvian disaster risk management system, which went through a major redesign in 2011, and explored several scenarios of disaster risk management and development to consider how investing in different types of risk reduction and preparedness measures could influence future flood outcomes. The study concluded with a series of policy-focused recommendations for reducing disaster risk and building flood resilience. A surprise “coastal El Niño”: Lessons learned At the very end of December 2016, sea surface temperatures off the northern Peruvian coast warmed rapidly and unexpectedly, and by late January 2017 torrential rains began to fall across the region. Flooding continued for nearly three months, affected over 1.5 million people, caused 162 deaths, and resulted in extensive damage to critical infrastructure, businesses and homes. This localized coastal event, which was not actually a global El Niño but generated similar impacts to past severe El Niño events in Peru, both highlighted the relevance of the non-event study’s findings and provided a setting in which to conduct a traditional PERC. This latter PERC study, conducted in July 2017 by ISET-International in collaboration with Practical Action Peru, found that the 2017 flood disaster was largely human-caused and foreseeable, a result in line with the findings of the non-event study. A notable and expected difference between the two studies is that the non-event study focused primarily on national policy issues, whereas the post-event study had greater focus on the local level and how national and sub-national policies and practices led to local-level impacts. The combination of the two studies, with the non-event study recommendations focused on policy and the PERC study recommendations focused on practice, provides a strongly complementary set of information for practitioners across the disaster risk management spectrum. Despite the differences in the focus of analysis, both the non-event study and the PERC identify several common key lessons and recommendations: Greater investments in local level disaster risk management capacity-building are needed: A common complaint in Peru is that local governments lack the capacity to fulfill national government policies. Regional governments often hold responsibility for what should be local-level projects, and local governments are frequently not given the funds they need to implement disaster risk management projects. Lack of capacity at the local level often stems from a lack of national and regional government investment in capacity building, and not from a lack of interest and willingness to engage. Local government needs to be better represented in regional and national planning and policy processes: Local governments have largely been left out of higher level planning and policy processes, leading to tense relationships between levels of government and to policies and plans that do not reflect local needs and realties. Collaboration and coordination between sectors needs to improve: Both disaster risk management and resilience building require multi-sectoral coordination. However, in Peru sectors are siloed, making it difficult to conduct coordinated and efficient disaster response, or to plan and implement comprehensive disaster risk reduction and recovery actions. High-risk settlements and communities need to be the focus of disaster risk management efforts: A substantial percentage of the Peruvian population live on lands highly exposed to floods. Minimizing the risk faced by these communities requires discussion on: (a) whether these communities should be resettled, (b) where and how they could be resettled, (c) and how recurrent settlement on high risk lands will be prevented. These recommendations, which were generated in both reports, are important entry points for building resilience in Peru. They are also applicable to virtually all flood-prone environments. Disaster risk management practitioners and governments do not need to wait for a disaster to happen to reveal key gaps in disaster risk management and resilience. It is possible to learn from floods anywhere, anytime and to start building resilience today.

Translated from article on: Sai Gon Times Online Investing in urban green infrastructure is a growing trend in many of the world’s cities. Cities in Vietnam are also beginning to talk about investing in green infrastructure, which is considered as a multi-purpose solution to their existing urban concerns. Can Tho City is taking its first steps in urban green infrastructure development. In the “Community training workshop on green infrastructure development” event organized in Can Tho on October 12, Mr Tran Van Giai Phong from ISET-Vietnam emphasized that green infrastructure has a significant role in promoting sustainable development in a city, especially in the context of adverse climate change and environmental pollution impacts. Mr Phong shared that he had worked with stakeholders in Can Tho from April to September this year to conduct a research on the shocks and stresses faced by the city. The first and foremost shock and stress issue for Can Tho City is flooding, which originates from various causes, including tidal surges, urban development and local rainfall. Although Can Tho had extended various efforts in addressing flooding issues, especially through projects funded by the World Bank, such as those to build river embankments, roads and drainage culverts to reduce the pressure of flooding. However, as Mr Phong stated, it is critical to develop more integrated measures, ones that can address multiple objectives at the same time. Besides flooding, Can Tho is also experiencing stress from both water and air pollution. “We had seen a large number of urban drainage infrastructures in Can Tho City, and find that they are often built to fulfil only one particular objective. For example, existing drainage channels only contribute to addressing drainage issues, and the objective of reducing environment pollution has not been integrated,” said Mr Phong, who also added that green infrastructure and green space development is an opportunity for environment pollution reduction objectives to be integrated. Another type of stress of growing concern in Can Tho City as well as other Cuu Long Delta provinces is riverbank erosion. According to Mr Phong, “When we build hard embankment structures along riverbanks, much of the natural landscape value will be lost. Therefore, in many cities, people have tried to develop technical measures to integrate biological elements into hard structures to ‘soften’ them and to improve local the landscape.” Above: Mr. Tran Van Gian Phong, representative from ISET-Vietnam presenting at the workshop on October 12. Photo: Trung Chánh Mr Phong also added that urban green infrastructure is not only about the area of trees planted, but also about how green trees can be incorporated in structural measures to at the same time alleviate water pollution and reduce runoff, flooding and erosion. “These are necessary considerations in new green infrastructure projects in Can Tho,” Mr Phong emphasized. Another expert, Mr Nguyen Nguyen Minh, representative from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) shared that green infrastructure can help to address many practical problems in Vietnam cities. Specifically, green infrastructure will improve the landscape, air quality, reduce noise, promote biodiversity and boost economic development. “Regarding biodiversity, the fact is that in cities such as Ho Chi Minh or Can Tho, there are much less birds today than there were before,” Mr Minh provided an example. According to Mr Minh, CSIRO’s calculations revealed that if green infrastructure is promoted further in Australia, it could help to reduce energy use by 20%, and reduce local temperature by 2-8oC, depending on the specific location and time. Another benefit of green infrastructure development, according to Mr Minh, is that it helps to increase the quality of urban life, thus increasing real estate prices and promoting investment, tourism and trade. “People prefer areas with green coverage. In Australia, people are willing to pay a premium for houses in a greener area.”

Above: Overview of the Vu Gia – Thu Bon river basin (from WEAP model) There a many facets to the existing problems facing Da Nang city and Quang Nam province of Vietnam related to their shared Vu Gia – Thu Bon river basin. These range from changed patterns of flooding, increased water shortage, to elevated surface water pollution and salinization, all of which can be connected to a certain extent to the development and operation of hydropower reservoirs upstream of this cross-boundary river system. A Prime Minister decision was issued in September 2015, providing rules for the operation of the multiple reservoirs in this river system (Decision 1537), but this operation protocol seems not effective enough. As Quang Nam and Da Nang continue to struggle with water management challenges, the damages and risks to people, property and production continue to expand in the context of climate change, population growth and economic development. The official establishment of the Coordination Board for Integrated Management of the Vu Gia – Thu Bon river basin and Quang Nam – Da Nang coastal areas earlier in August 2017 was a major milestone in the two provinces’ collaborative effort for resolving their existing water conflicts. It was based on the understanding of their inter-connected development risks and challenges, threaded together by the flows of the Vu Gia, the Thu Bon and their many branches. A focus area of action of the newly formed river basin organization (RBO) was the construction of a Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) model for the entire Vu Gia – Thu Bon river basin. This activity was initiated by a project led by ISET under the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) program in the months leading to the RBO’s official establishment, and will be strengthened with the support of the operating RBO. A versatile river basin model not only looking at water supply, demand, and infrastructure, but also hydrologic interactions to describe runoff and irrigation dynamics, the WEAP model is expected to capture the complicated nature of the inter-dependence of the Quang Nam and Da Nang, provide nuanced analysis of different water management options, through which to build understanding and inform policies and decisions for integrated management of the river basin. The standing working group under the RBO, consisting of technical staff from key departments and agencies in the two provinces (especially Da Nang Department of Meteo-Hydrology and Climate Change, and Quang Nam Division of Sea and Islands), is charged with the responsibility to work with ISET experts on the WEAP model development and analysis. A great advantage for this work is the expertise and WEAP modelling results that Da Nang city had inherited from a water assessment project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, finished in 2016. The WEAP model for the Vu Gia – Thu Bon basin is being built upon this existing model of Da Nang. WEAP training in Tam Ky September 11-13, 2017 (Photo: Quang Nam DONRE) An extensive three-day training was organized in Tam Ky city of Quang Nam from September 11-13, in which Dr David Yates—ISET’s consultant from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and an experienced WEAP specialist—provided the working group members, especially those from Quang Nam who are less familiar with this modelling tool, with both detailed theoretical background of WEAP’s functionalities, and opportunities to play around with the tool’s applications for the practical problems of their own river basins. Above: Dr. David Yates presenting the WEAP model for the Vu Gia – Thu Bon river basin at SLD3 (Photo: Da Nang DONRE) Following this training workshop, on September 15, 2017, ISET and the RBO organized a shared learning dialogue (SLD), its first major event since official establishment in August, and the third in a series of such events under the GRP project. A key objective of this SLD is to share and initiate discussion over initial WEAP modelling work. In this workshop, Dr David Yates presented the Vu Gia – Thu Bon-level WEAP model, in which four scenarios related to the inter-reservoir operation protocol was integrated: Scenario A: Pre-development (no reservoir storage or diversion) Scenario B: Reservoir management according to current (Decision 1537) protocol Scenario C: Wet Protocol Sensitivity (increase the maximum flood Level to near capacity) Scenario D: Dry Protocol Sensitivity (triple the Dak Mi 4 release for both intensive and normal period) Above: Modelled flow of Dak Mi at Thanh My under different scenarios Many of the resulted model outputs are consistent with actual data, as confirmed by participants at the workshop, suggesting the model’s credibility in reflecting actual water dynamics in the river basin. However, it was emphasized by the WEAP expert that the model is still in an early phase of its development, and that the presentation is merely to illustrate what the model can and cannot do, through which to generate discussions on how the model can be useful in assisting related water management strategies. It is therefore premature to make any conclusions or draw any recommendations from the current model outputs. Discussions by the working group members and project experts resonated on the need for further model refinement and filling of data gaps, especially on historic reservoir storage, rainfall (especially upstream of reservoirs), and historical inundation in downstream floodplains. In addition, one of the important questions for the model to answer will be related to the water diversion structure at the Dak Mi 4 reservoir on the Thu Bon River, an issue of great concerns of both provinces. The modelling team will take all of these points forward for further refinement and framing of the model to best suit the project’s objectives—which are to best understand the different trade-offs facing Quang Nam and Da Nang in the management of their flooding and water resource risks, and to promote new policies and courses of actions to manage these risks and promote sustainable and inclusive development in both provinces. In addition to discussions on the WEAP model, the SLD also discussed results of community vulnerability assessments conducted by CARE International experts in five communes of Da Nang and Quang Nam, with the purpose of understanding specific historical events and their impacts, improving flood and drought responses, and formulating risk reduction plans for the communities and its most vulnerable members. The local working group also presented a proposed project for installing water quality monitoring facilities in the Vu Gia – Thu Bon river system. The next shared learning dialogue event of this project is planned for the end of October 2017.

On August 21, 2017, in Tam Ky city, Quang Nam province, the People’s Committee of Quang Nam Province and Da Nang City organized the Signing Ceremony for the Establishment of the Coordination Board for Integrated Management of the Vu Gia – Thu Bon River Basin and coastal area of Quang Nam – Da Nang (or the Vu Gia – Thu Bon River Basin Organization-RBO). Above: Signing of the agreement by Mr. Ho Ky Minh, Vice Chair of Da Nang City People’s Committee and Mr. Le Tri Thanh, Vice Chair of Quang Nam Province People’s Committee. This is the result of a process of active collaboration between the two municipalities, as well as support of the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) and the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET). It is expected to offer a constructive platform for addressing current issues in flood risk management and water resource management in the shared river basin. The RBO will be alternatively chaired by the Vice Chairs of Quang Nam and Da Nang, for periods of 6 months. In the upcoming period, it will focus on assessing flood risks and water shortage and saline intrusion risks in the Vu Gia – Thu Bon basin, and addressing these issues in consideration of the division of water at the different confluences in the river basin, as well as the existing protocol for the operation of hydropower reservoirs upstream of the river basin in Quang Nam province. More information related to the signing ceremony can be found in the Sai Gon Giai Phong Online article (in Vietnamese) here. Read more about this project in the UCR-CoP post here.

Rapid urbanization coupled with the threats of climate change is perfectly exemplified in Central Vietnam and especially in the city of Da Nang, where the annual population growth rate is 3.48%. The local economy is also growing rapidly, and with this progress comes an increase in risks and vulnerability. Flooding is one such vulnerability, and is an ongoing problem in the region. According to technical analysis, climate change is likely to increase flooding in and around Da Nang over the next 30 years. Flooding has already caused devastating economic damage and the loss of life in the region. Above: The city of Da Nang, the majority of which is surrounded by water. To the east there is the Han River, and to the North the Da Nang Bay. Google Maps, Feb. 2nd, 2017 While flooding affects many people in Da Nang, the poor and marginalized are often the most vulnerable. As Gaelle Gourmelon of the Worldwatch Institute explains: ‘Climate change disproportionately affects the poor in cities. As cities grow, poor residents often expand informal settlements, including by setting up makeshift shelters in flood-prone areas. These areas, already limited in their access to public services, are increasingly vulnerable as extreme weather events place growing strain on people’s ability to obtain water and food, sanitation, and electricity.’ To find out more about this topic see Richard Friend and James Jarvie’s chapter in State of the World: Can Cities be Sustainable 2016. Because flooding disproportionately affects poor and marginalized communities, engaging these groups is a key element in reducing flood risk. Dr. Karen MacClune of ISET-International further elaborates: ‘Flood resilience relies on the ability of people at the household and community levels to understand and make informed decisions when faced with flood-risk. It is therefore vital that communities participate in the learning process and have their concerns voiced, both to empower them and to ensure their concerns are understood and addressed.’ ISET has worked for over a decade in Da Nang to engage with local communities, reduce flood risk, and build urban climate resilience. Under a new Water Window grant from the Global Resilience Partnership, ISET will work with the organization CARE to engage local stakeholders from poor and vulnerable communities. After selecting four vulnerable communities in central Vietnam, the team will conduct vulnerability and capacity assessments. Afterwards, they will facilitate a series of meetings within these communities over the course of six months to gain a deeper understanding of peoples’ wants and needs. Through these inclusive community discussions, called Shared Learning Dialogues, participants will brainstorm possible risk-reducing action plans, and weigh the pros, cons, and trade-offs of different options. Finally, the team will support the community in crafting a flood resilience action plan. Community engagement is only one of many actions needed for reducing flood risk in Central Vietnam, and in communities suffering from flooding all over the world. Under funding from the GRP Water Window Grant, ISET and partners aim not only to engage local vulnerable communities but to bring their concerns to the attention of government decision makers at the local, regional, and national levels. It is our hope that this process can be replicated throughout Vietnam.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) collaborated with the National Assembly (NA) of Vietnam to organize a regional seminar on Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the Parliaments in the Asia Pacific Region with a focus on Responding to climate change Actions of legislators to achieve the SDGs in Ho Chi Minh city in May 2017. The seminar focused on five main themes: (1) the role of parliaments in achieving the SDGs; (2) promoting gender equality and health in the context of responding to climate change; (3) challenges, opportunities and response actions of countries in the region; (4) international commitments and requirements for national legislators; and (5) mobilizing resources for the SDGs’ implementation in the Asia-Pacific region. Dr. Toan Vu shares key lessons and challenges in responding to climate change and in building urban climate resilience. ISET was honor to be invited as panelist participating session No. 3. on “Challenges, Opportunities and Response Action of countries in the region”. ISET’s Technical Consultant, Dr. Toan Vu, talked about the key lessons and governance-related challenges in building urban climate resilience in Asia and its implication for achieving SDGs. One of Dr. Toan Vu’s main points is that, responding to climate change is not just a technical and technological matter but constrained strongly by governance-related barriers. Findings of this seminar highlight the importance of and the urgent need to address climate change considered as one of the biggest threats to sustainable development. It was also highly recommended that Parliaments, through their legislative, oversight, budgetary and representative roles, should take stronger and more concerted actions: to respond to climate change and to mainstream commitments to climate change responses into sustainable development plans; to ensure an effective implementation of climate change and sustainable development actions; to integrate the sustainable development goals into legislation in a holistic and synergistic manner; to ensure that priorities are identified and implemented with a meaningful participation of citizens especially vulnerable groups and marginalized populations and that no one is left behind. For more information please see the event page or this article.

Above: Piura, Peru (Puedes leer este blog en español al final de la página) A sudden warming of waters off Peru’s coast this year, as well as an unusual easing of trade winds, unleashed torrential downpours in February, March and April 2017 causing some of the worst flooding in Peru in decades. Over 1.1 million people have been affected in rural communities and urban areas in 24 of the country’s 25 departments. One third of the affected population, about 315,000 people, lives in the department of Piura. Preliminary official reports indicate that 32,627 homes are destroyed or uninhabitable and nearly 200,000 homes are affected. Flood reconstruction will cost $3 billion in the short term, and up to $9 billion over five years, the country’s president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, said in an interview in early April. The current flooding, while tragic, provides opportunities to better understand local disaster risk management. ISET-International will conduct a Post-Event Review Capability (PERC) report to better understand how disaster risk management, and resilience efforts at large, manifested during and after the floods. ISET-International will work in collaboration with the organizations Practical Action Peru and IIASA and under guidance from the Zurich Flood Resilience Program. In the process of creating this PERC report, ISET-International aims to explore how previous flood risk management efforts, specifically those implemented by the Zurich Insurance Company, contributed to resilience, and identify which resilience actions are most effective for flooding of this scale. ISET will work with partners to identify how lessons from this report can be used to directly inform flood recovery efforts, capacitate key stakeholders to pursue needed policy and planning advocacy, and leverage the recovery phase to further resilience goals and ensure that pre-existing patterns of vulnerability are not perpetuated or exacerbated. Above: Piura, Peru The focus of this PERC will be on flooding in Piura, where partner Practical Action Peru is currently working. Flooding in Piura has been particularly severe in 2017, as well as flooding during the 1997-98 El Nino. We will work with partners to assure that the PERC report is integrated with their work and provides the foundation needed for actively engaging with policy makers at various levels to influence recovery decisions and spending in ways that enhance community resilience. Our team will conduct discussions and interviews with local residents, water authorities and water experts, and local, state and national government entities. These discussions and interviews will be aimed at understanding what happened and what aspects of the flood were most problematic. ISET will investigate where residents, government employees, emergency responders, systems, laws and social norms proved to be flood resilient, and where there is opportunity for building increased flood resilience. The goal will be to draw out broader lessons and identify potential for solid, scalable, replicable action. The final report will be published in Spanish, and in addition our team will create flyers, two-pagers, etc. as appropriate to the Peru local audience. It is our hope that in collaboration with our partners we can create content and framing that will support resilience outreach efforts. INUNDACIONES EN PERU 2017: ESTUDIO DE EVALUACION PARA IDENTIFICAR UN MANEJO EFECTIVO DEL RIESGO Y ESFUERZOS DE RESILIENCIA Durante Febrero, Marzo, y Abril 2017 Perú se vio afectado por lluvias torrenciales debido a un calentamiento repentino de las aguas de las costas peruanas y un debilitamiento inusual de los vientos alisios. Esto ocasionó una de las peores inundaciones en Perú en las últimas décadas. Cerca de 1.1 millones de personas han sido afectadas en áreas urbanas y rurales en 24 de los 25 departamentos del Perú. Un tercio de la población afectada, cerca de 315,000 personas, vive en el departamento de Piura. Reportes oficiales preliminares indican que 32,627 hogares han sido destruidos o no están en condiciones habitables y cerca de 200,000 hogares han sido afectados. El Presidente del Perú, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, declaró en una entrevista a principios de Abril que la reconstrucción costará $3 billones en el corto plazo y $9 billones en un plazo de cinco años. Las inundaciones que han ocurrido, aunque son trágicas, nos permiten comprender de mejor manera el manejo local del riesgo. ISET-International llevará a cabo un estudio de las capacidades después de un desastre (que denominamos PERC) para entender como el manejo del riesgo de desastres y esfuerzos de resiliencia se manifiestan durante y después de las inundaciones. ISET-International trabajará en colaboración con Acción Práctica Perú e IIASA y bajo la guía del Programa de Resiliencia a las Inundaciones de Zurich. En el proceso de investigación del PERC, ISET-International busca explorar como los esfuerzos previos de manejo de riesgo de inundaciones, específicamente aquellos implementados por Zurich Insurance Company, han contribuido a crear resiliencia. Se busca también identificar qué acciones de resiliencia son más efectivas para inundaciones de esta escala. ISET trabajará con sus socios para identificar como las lecciones de este estudio pueden ser usadas para informar los esfuerzos de recuperación frente a las inundaciones, para capacitar a actores claves para que lleven a cabo planeación y apoyo en el diseño de políticas públicas, y para que apalanquen la fase de recuperación para continuar con los objetivos de resiliencia y asegurar que los modelos de vulnerabilidad pre-existentes no continúen o se incrementen. El PERC se enfocará en las inundaciones en Piura, donde nuestro socio Acción Práctica Perú está actualmente trabajando. Las inundaciones en Piura han sido particularmente severas en el 2017, así como lo fueron durante el Niño en 1997-98. Trabajaremos con nuestros socios para asegurarnos que el estudio PERC sea integrado en su trabajo y sirva de base para atraer la atención de los tomadores de decisiones en varios niveles, y que permita influir en las decisiones de recuperación y gasto de manera que se fortalezca la resiliencia comunitaria. Nuestro equipo llevará a cabo entrevistas con residentes locales, autoridades del agua y expertos en el tema del agua, entidades del gobierno a nivel local y nacional. El objetivo de estas conversaciones es entender que sucedió y que aspectos de las inundaciones fueron los más problemáticos. ISET investigará cuando los residentes, personal del gobierno, personal a cargo de emergencias, los sistemas, leyes y normas sociales fueron capaces de responder de forma resiliente frente a las inundaciones y donde existe oportunidad de mejorar y ser más resilientes. El objetivo final es extraer lecciones más generales e identificar el potencial para replicar las acciones. El reporte final será publicado en español y además se prepararán folletos y otros materiales de difusión de acuerdo a las necesidades de la audiencia peruana. Es nuestro deseo que en colaboración con nuestros socios podamos preparar un contenido que apoye los esfuerzos de construcción de resiliencia.

(Above: The city of Da Nang, the majority of which is surrounded by water. To the east there is the Han River, and to the North the Da Nang Bay. Google Maps, Feb. 2nd, 2017) The majority of the city of Da Nang is surrounded by water and it is susceptible to regular flooding and tropical typhoons. With a population of roughly one million and a growing economy, this city has a lot to lose when water rises. To meet this challenge, Da Nang became part of the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) in 2009, and in the following year undertook a project that would change flood risk reduction within the city, the region, and possibly the whole country. 2010: Da Nang Begins Work on a Hydrologic-Hydraulic Model During last decade, Da Nang experienced rapid urbanization and with it an encroachment on natural flood plains. At the same time, the city’s economy was flourishing and land became more valuable. City officials recognized that the issue of flooding needed to be addressed more thoroughly, and in 2010 the Da Nang Department of Construction submitted a proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation’s ACCCRN program for support to build a comprehensive flood model. The grant was awarded and the city began work. The goal was to construct a connected hydrologic-hydraulic model for Da Nang that took into consideration potential impacts of climate change and urban development. This model would allow the Department of Construction to examine the interaction between proposed development plans and flooding, both in 2010 and future projections that took into account the impacts of climate change. For the model to be successful the city’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), and the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE) would have to cooperate with the Department of Construction. These departments had river system and surface runoff models that need to be integrated into the new model. However, these departments were not accustomed to working together. Each department had their own technical languages, which made inter-departmental communication very difficult. The above departments did not see how the new model would directly benefit them, and thus were not proactive in working on the project. An inability to communicate became one of the biggest hurdles in creating a comprehensive flood model. Progress was slow at first. But the project persisted, and with work, time, and patience, the dynamic between the three departments shifted in a positive way. This was a tipping-point towards success as each department put more effort into the project. As this happened, the departments began to learn each other’s technical languages, and could finally understand one another. With this shared language, the ‘Hydrology and Urban Development Simulation Model’ (HUDSIM) was completed and is still used today. The HUDSIM is a powerful tool and is used in Da Nang to help reduce the risks of flooding. This modeling tool was not the only ‘fruit’ of this project, however: bringing three city departments together to create a process of collaboration and shared language was in itself an act of resilience building. The three departments needed to start working together to increase general resilience within the city, and collaborating on the HUDSIM provided a reason to begin the relationship. 2016: Replicating the Process of Resilience Building on a Larger Scale City-wide cooperation on flood risk reduction has been beneficial for Da Nang, and city officials now recognize that the process must be expanded to include the entire flood plane. This involves cooperation with their neighboring jurisdiction, Quang Nam. Through a grant from the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) Da Nang and Quang Nam are beginning to replicate the resilience-building–through-flood-modeling process. This project began in 2016 and is attracting national attention as the government of Vietnam looks to this regional effort as an example for other river basins in the country. ISET has been involved in resilience building in the city of Da Nang since 2010 and was a key facilitator in the HUDSIM effort. Our Vietnam team will be crucial players in the future efforts of Da Nang and Quang Nam to create a basin-wide model.