Search Results

Author: Tho Nguyen, ISET-International, Vietnam Office Early warning systems (EWS) are integral to disaster risk reduction and climate resilience, safeguarding lives, property, and infrastructure against flood impacts. ISET has been collaborating with partners in Hue City (formerly Thua Thien Hue province) to enhance its EWS, with a key focus on integrating redundancy (i.e. built-in backup capacity) into its design. This approach addresses gaps in system reliability, and we are now beginning to see tangible results. Hue – Where rain is a ‘specialty’ Photo: October 2023 Flood in Hue City, Viet Nam. Credit: Hue DRM Office   Hue City, located on Vietnam’s central coast, is highly susceptible to floods and storms. Twenty-five years ago, the city (then Thua Thien Hue province) endured one of the worst flood disasters in the country’s history, leading to significant loss of life and property [1] and which to this day continuing to evoke troubling memories for many survivors. In legacy of this tragedy, the city has heavily invested in its disaster management system, enhancing financial resources, human capacity, infrastructure, and technologies, including its flood forecasting and early warning systems. However, with storms, heavy rain and flooding being persistent challenges (with repeated serious and sometimes unusual storms and flooding events as recent as in 2020 [2] , 2022 [3]  and 2023 [4] ), and amidst today’s urban development and climate change, Hue still struggles to keep its people and assets safe despite its investment efforts. Blind spots in the EWS Despite heavy provincial investments, our Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) studies  revealed several gaps in Hue’s flood forecasting and early warning systems. First, rainfall and water level monitoring equipment sometimes lack reliability and data connectivity, reducing the speed and accuracy of flood forecasts. For example, the Kim Long and Phu Oc river gauging stations in Hue have become increasingly unreliable in recent years, frequently malfunctioning during heavy rains, compromising their critical role in reservoir operation management and flood warning.   Additionally, insufficient, aging warning equipment and outdated technology hinder communication with communities, especially vulnerable groups like the elderly and those in remote low-lying areas. Equipment failure and limited contingency planning for extreme events also pose challenges, as the system’s dependence on electricity and internet access means that service disruptions during floods can prevent critical warnings from reaching residents. For example, FRMC study results indicate that in many wards/communes in Thua. Thien Hue, the loudspeaker systems depend on electricity to operate, yet major floods often cause power outages. Without generators or backup power options, the emergency alert system becomes ineffective during extreme events. This poses significant risks, especially during prolonged or successive floods, as seen in the October-November 2020 flood event. Without power, other communication channels—such as television, radio, and internet—are also typically unavailable. While cell towers may remain active, most residents lack power banks with which to recharge cell phones, resulting in reduced ability to receive or send critical messages.   The importance of redundancy   Building redundancy is an effective approach to addressing the identified blind spots in Hue’s EWS. Redundancy is a core aspect of resilience thinking, one of the “ four Rs ” alongside Robustness, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity . It refers to a system’s capacity to continue essential functions during failures, thanks to built-in backups or spare capacities.   For flood EWS, redundancy might include multiple sensors for monitoring rainfall and river levels to cross-reference data for accuracy. In communication, redundancy means having multiple alert channels—like sirens, text alerts, radio, or local messengers—so that if one channel fails, others can still deliver warnings to affected communities. For building or community power, redundancy can include back-up generators or combined solar and battery systems. This layered approach helps to strengthen EWS reliability, making it more resilient in crisis situations.   Redundant systems are crucial in disaster-prone areas like Hue, where early warning equipment failures, disruptions to power, internet, or communication infrastructure are common during extreme floods. By building these backup systems and redundancies, even if some elements fail the EWS as a whole can maintain essential functions, helping to prevent gaps in warning delivery and ensuring that communities are informed and can take timely action.   Closing the gaps In collaboration with our partner, the Standing Office of the Steering Committee for Disaster Prevention and Control, Search and Rescue of Hue City (DRM Office), ISET has implemented several key improvements to enhance the city’s EWS, focusing particularly on redundancy and reliability. Photo: Da Vien bridge river gauge in Hue City, Viet Nam. Credit: ISET-International, Vietnam Office In September 2024, we supported the installation of two automatic river water level gauges equipped with radar sensors and solar batteries at Da Vien Bridge on the Huong River and Phu Tu Bridge on the Bo River, strategically positioned near the existing Kim Long and Phu Oc stations. These gauges provide real-time backup data, helping to mitigate delays and failures at the Kim Long and Phu Oc stations, which have become more frequent, as demonstrated in recent years including during Tropical Storm Trami in October-November 2024. This addition has been instrumental in managing the city’s three major hydropower reservoirs–Binh Dien, Huong Dien and Ta Trach–and ensuring timely community alerts. Photo: High-power siren in Hue City, Viet Nam. Credit: ISET-International, Vietnam Office In addition, two high-power, remotely operated sirens were installed in August 2024, providing far-reaching alerts covering areas within 5km of the siren. First used during Tropical Storm Trami, these sirens serve as a robust, last-resort warning system for the urban districts of Hue City. Recognizing its effectiveness, the provincial government has approved the expansion of this model for storm warning across all nine districts/towns of the city. “During storm No. 6 (Trami), two siren clusters were operated to effectively warn people to stay off the streets and proactively respond to the storm. Similarly, during the flooding period following storm Trami, when the operation of Kim Long and Phu Oc stations was both interrupted for more than a day during heavy rain, the newly installed gauges [at Da Vien bridge and Tu Phu bridge] came to tremendous help for the operation of reservoirs and monitoring of flooding in the downstream areas of our province.” - Mr. Le Dien Minh – Head of DRM Division, Hue DRM Office   In 2022, two smart flood warning towers were also installed in Trung Lang (Quang Thai commune) and Pho Nam A (Quang Tho commune). The towers send real-time flood data to the hydro-meteorological system and issue warnings through the widely used Hue-S app. Featuring sirens, rotating lights, and solar-powered 30-day battery backup, these towers are built to withstand floods, storms, and power outages. They provide critical alerts when other channels may be compromised. A private company, Watec, contributed half the cost of these installations.   Both the river gauges and the smart flood warning towers transmit real-time data to a web-based platform, which securely stores and makes the data accessible for analysis, visualization, and decision-making. Photo: Smart flood tower, co-funded by the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance project and Watec company, installed in Trung Lang village, Hue City. Credit: Hue DRM Office “When flooding happens, flood level data from the warning tower will be updated on the website of Quang Tho commune. We will also send updates to the village heads, who will inform people in their villages so they can take timely and appropriate actions. The data from the flood tower in Pho Nam A village can be used to predict flood level in other locations in the ward, so it will be useful not only to this village but other nearby villages in our commune too.” - Mr. Le Thanh Xuan, DRR official of Quang Tho commune  Photo: Support backup early warning equipment for project communities. Credit: Hue DRM Office Finally, ISET also provided back-up early warning equipment for communities and wards/communes in Hue. This support includes backup generators for powering loudspeaker systems during outages, portable power banks to keep community first responders connected, and portable loudspeakers for disaster response teams to notify households that may struggle to hear standard loudspeaker warnings. These tools help maintain communication even when primary systems fail.   For all provincially managed equipment, the DRM Office successfully secured annual budget allocations from the Hue City government for operation and maintenance. Similarly, local governments and communities have confirmed plans to ensure ongoing use of ward- and commune-level equipment, reinforcing the redundancy that underpins system resilience. “Being one of the most flood-prone provinces in Vietnam, our province needs robust and innovative measures to strengthen its flood early warning system. We really appreciate the project support for the river water gauges, the smart flood warning towers and sirens. They will provide us with timely data and help us deliver prompt warnings to the communities. We have acquired the People's Committee’s budget allocation for the annual operation and maintenance costs of the installed pieces of equipment and similarly for all those that will be installed.” - Mr. Dang Van Hoa, Director of Hue DRM Office   Sustainability and moving forward The improvements highlighted above demonstrate our approach of targeting multiple levels to effectively address community resilience needs. This includes a balanced mix of advanced, high-tech solutions alongside adapted low-tech measures, each serving a unique role in strengthening flood EWS in Hue City. In all cases, we work closely with provincial partners to ensure that the equipment and measures are fully integrated into the official system, promoting sustained effectiveness and long-term impact.   While these efforts represent significant progress, they are only initial steps in improving the city’s EWS. ISET has also been working on establishing a comprehensive flood database, which, among other functions, provides reference information for flood forecasting and supports the development of a flood parking map that identifies safe locations for vehicles during flooding. Additionally, we have delivered training on accessing and utilizing various sources of EWS information. In the coming years, we will continue collaborating with the city to refine early warning messages to enhance clarity and better meet community needs. We are also committed to identifying other gaps and implementing targeted solutions to address them. Strengthening the EWS and building climate resilience will require sustained, ongoing effort.   For more informati on, please visit: the Alliance/CRMC website and ISET website [1]   https://reliefweb.int/report/viet-nam/vietnam-floods-appeal-no-3299-situation-report-no-1 [2]   https://www.jbarisk.com/products-services/event-response/vietnam-floods/ [3]  Report on the implementation of response to rain and flooding caused by circulation of storm No. 5 and storm No. 6 in Thua Thien Hue province dated 20 Oct 2022 [4]   https://dantri.com.vn/xa-hoi/thua-thien-hue-hung-dot-lu-lon-chua-tung-co-trong-10-nam-qua-20231116193741441.htm About:   ISET-International (ISET)  is a US-based action research organization with over 25 years in the international development space. ISET builds climate resilience through program design, implementation, evaluation, and learning. We are the MERL lead for the Alliance and our Vietnam office delivers climate resilience programming with communities and local government.     The Standing Office of the Steering Committee for Disaster Prevention and Control, Search and Rescue (DRM Office) of Hue City is responsible for coordinating disaster response, prevention, and mitigation efforts within the city. Working under the provincial government, it plays a key role in emergency preparedness, early warning, and coordinating resources across sectors to support communities during natural disasters. The DRM Office also collaborates with local and international partners to strengthen resilience against floods, storms, and other climate-related hazards.

ISET-International reflects on key takeaways on climate resilience programs, from the Alliance to Gobeshona. ISET-International attended the fourth annual Gobeshona Global Conference, held this year from 27 March to 1 April. Our key takeaways, from sessions on urban resilience to building resilience to extreme heat, are: Meaningful community participation is key for climate change impact. Intensely local solutions make scaling a challenge. Sustainability beyond the project timeline remains a work in progress. We see these points mirrored in our work. Meaningful community participation As the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Lead for the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance (the Alliance), ISET has seen the impacts of meaningful community participation accumulate over the past five years. Impacts range from successful community advocacy in Kenya, to saved lives and assets during flood events in Nepal, Peru, and Malawi, to groundbreaking legislative changes increasing local financing and/or action on resilience in Albania, Bangladesh, Malawi, Kenya, and Nepal. This was accomplished in part through the use of the Alliance’s resilience measurement framework – the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) – a participatory tool which requires more than just having people show up to meetings. The highly involved process of communities learning and implementing the FRMC is an investment that can build an evidence base and common language around community resilience. The result: high alignment in understanding resilience needs and opportunities between diverse stakeholders, including communities, government, and community organizations. In the Alliance, this has also facilitated further joint learning and action. You can read more about this in our Year 5 Learning Report. The challenge of scaling A challenge that remains for us – and evidently, climate adaptation leaders attending Gobeshona – is how to scale climate solutions that are necessarily local. We’ve seen this, time and again, from all perspectives, having implemented, supported, and evaluated a range of locally-led climate resilience actions. While we don’t have a silver bullet solution, our evaluation of CJRF’s Phase I portfolio highlights that having partnerships with national and international partners who have access to national decision-makers improves the likelihood of successful scaling. Sustainability: a work in progress Often seriously considered only in the exit phase of a project, sustainability remains narrowly understood. Typical conceptions encompass handover of project interventions to local government, organizations, or communities, regardless of their involvement in a project. Based on our experience, climate adaptation projects can benefit from a wider definition of sustainability. Sustainability should be considered not only for interventions but also “softer” aspects such as relationships, community dynamics, and long-term engagement, and can be explored from project inception. The Alliance’s Case Study on Red Cross Mexico, in the second Foundations for Change Report (an annual report highlighting emergent learning across the Alliance), describes a salient example from our work. The Mexican Red Cross began in 2013 by organizing community brigades in select communities in Tabasco, training them in disaster risk reduction, preparedness, and response. These brigades worked closely with local government in the lead up to and during flood events. This type of community-government relationship was unusual at the time and its success caught the attention of state and national authorities, eventually receiving a national-level award. Now, beyond 2023, in addition to community brigades having successfully supported communities during flood events, the number of brigades has expanded and the system has been institutionalized in national policy, supporting growth beyond the Alliance. Our key takeaways from this year’s Gobeshona conference are resonant. In our view, they can be effectively addressed, by being considered by climate adaptation and resilience programs from the program design phase onwards.

Hurricane Ida both confirmed that we can plan and build to address climate change, and it was a wake-up call for how broad the need is, how quickly we need to act, and where we’ve underestimated our risk. The pumps, dikes and levees protecting the City of New Orleans—which were dramatically strengthened after Hurricane Katrina—worked. Flooding within the city was minimized, as was loss of life. The performance of the flood protection measures was a triumph and illustrates that when we take risk seriously and invest in preparedness and resilience, we can succeed. However, Ida also highlighted the lack of similar investment and planning in other areas. We’re used to thinking of hurricanes as a windspeed threat; the increasing flood threat they pose is something we are ill-prepared for. The New Orleans power grid was the first major casualty of the storm. An effort similar to the post-Katrina flood defenses is now needed in the power sector to strengthen that critical system. More surprising was the damage wrought by Ida in New York and New Jersey. Yet increasingly, this is the climate we need to be prepared for. Recent research (Li and Chakraborty, 2020) indicate that hurricanes, because of the increased heat and moisture they carry as a result of warming sea surface temperatures, are decaying more slowly as they move inland. This results in much greater transport of hurricane moisture inland. We’re used to thinking of hurricanes as a windspeed threat; the increasing flood threat they pose is something we are ill-prepared for. As New Orleans and the state of Louisiana repair their power grid and clean up from Ida, they should also address other critical and potentially at-risk systems, such as water and wastewater. As New York and New Jersey mourn their dead and recover from the flash flooding, they and the surrounding states need to recognize such floods are their new reality. We can address the challenges Hurricane Ida highlighted, but first we need to recognize we need to, and then we need to acknowledge that it is cheaper to address them in advance rather than be faced with regrets and destruction after the fact.

For low-income families in coastal areas of Vietnam, storm and typhoon damage is a constant threat to life and well-being. However, there is a way for them to escape the vicious cycle, involving proper financial and technical support for storm-resilience housing. Nguyen Anh Tho presents experiences from Da Nang City. Why are Poor Communities Most Vulnerable to Natural Hazards? Early in the morning of October 15, 2013, Typhoon Nari made a landfall on Da Nang on the central coast of Vietnam. For eight long hours, constant violent winds, peaked at Category 1, up to 130 kilometres per hour, battered the city, and the accompanied heavy rainfall caused flooding in many areas. Da Nang was not the city experiencing the worst impact of this monstrous storm, yet twelve people were injured, 122 houses were destroyed, 178 houses partially collapsed, and thousands of roofs were ripped off. Key urban services such as power and water supply, transport, lighting and communications were also heavily disrupted in several areas of the city. For any family in Vietnam, housing is typically the single most valuable asset. A Vietnamese saying goes ‘Safe housing, sound livelihoods’ (an cư, lạc nghiệp), which represents a strong belief that good housing is the foundation of a good and stable life. However, it is a sad reality that most poor and near-poor households live in fragile housing units, often in areas prone to the impacts of natural hazards such as storm, flooding, erosion and landslide, and thus are highly susceptible to the destruction or damage by these hazards. An event like Nari is not an exceptional situation for Da Nang. The last equivalent storm was Typhoon Xangsane in 2006, the next in the line was Category 2-3 Typhoon Molave in 2020, and that is not including a number of times when the city narrowly escaped direct encounter with other violent storms, including Typhoon Haiyan earlier that November 2013. The future is even bleaker with projections of increased storm intensity under the effect of global climate change. Moreover, Da Nang, as with any other province or city in Vietnam nowadays, is undergoing a rapid urbanisation process, which often robs away natural areas such as coastal mangrove forests or water surfaces that act as the natural buffer and shield for houses from the devastating impacts of floods and storms. And poor families’ housing is caught in an even direr situation. This results in a vicious cycle of poverty, fragile housing, storm destruction, poverty, fragile housing, and another storm. Families may be lucky enough to receive support from housing programmes for rebuilding after a storm, but most of the time the financial support is inadequate and the house design and construction are not robust enough, so the risk of damage or destruction in the next storm around is still very high. Their financial situation does not allow for proper reconstruction, or for access of a formal loan to this purpose, thus they have to keep living in this vicious cycle and accept that there are always some months during the storm season when they almost never feel safe or sound in their own home. How Can Poor Households Become More Resilient to Storms? The housing damages by Typhoon Nari, as accounted above, were devastating to poor people’ houses, especially in shorefront areas of Da Nang. Yet in eight wards/communes right next to the sea (in Hoa Vang, Son Tra, Ngu Hanh Son and Lien Chieu districts), there are small pockets of houses that, despite belonging to poor and near-poor households, still stood firm and suffered no damage from the fierce storm. They are the 244 beneficiary households under a resilient housing credit programme implemented by the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-International (ISET) in collaboration with the Women’s Union of Da Nang City. According to ISET’s investigation, in the very same wards and communes where these 244 houses are located, 68 totally collapsed, 88 partially collapsed, 540 roofs were totally torn off, and 2,270 roofs were partially torn off, making a total of 2,996 damaged houses. Map: Locations of 8 beneficiary wards under ISET’s housing project in Da Nang as of 2013. In subsequent years, the project was rolled out to reach more household and additional wards in Da Nang, as well as other provinces in Vietnam. But Typhoon Nari was the first critical test to the project model. It later received UNFCCC’s Lighthouse Award in 2014 © Center of Survey and Mapping Data, modified by the author. There are two key elements to the support to these 244 households under this project: A credit loan for house retrofitting or rebuilding, with loan amount and payment schedule tailored to the needs and income stream of specific households, given the household’s commitment to following recommended storm-resilience guidance; and A storm-resilience technical design for the retrofitting or reconstruction. The credit loans, granted at a low interest and with a prolonged payment schedule, were managed by the Da Nang Women’s Union, who with a network extended to the grassroots level, stayed attune to the personal and financial situation of each household to make sure repayments are made on time, and that if the household face any unexpected difficulties, to reasonably delay their payment schedule as needed. The technical design of each house reinforcement or construction work is provided by Central Vietnam Architecture Consultancy (CVAC), a local architecture company, who closely investigated each household’s needs to draw the design, and provided regular monitoring during the construction process to make sure all required storm-resilience techniques and features are included. The five-fold storm-resilience features include: (1) Simple building forms; (2) Appropriate pitch roofs from 30-45 degrees; (3) Stronger housing structure; (4) Safe failure by using a solid room in the house; and (5) Secure connection between roof elements and main structure. For more detailed instructions for storm-resilience of low-income housing, please take a look at the following publications and project details: Support to Community-Based Disaster Risk Management in Southeast Asia, Technical Handbook on Design, Construction and Renovation of Typhoon-Resilient Low-Income Housing, and A Concept of Resilient Housing: Da Nang, Vietnam. Photo: Leader of Saving group, Da Nang Women’s Union and household member inside her Storm-resistant house © Tho Nguyen, ISET- International, 2012 What Lessons Can Be Learned from the Da Nang Project? This project provides a good lesson for every disaster prevention and reconstruction effort, not only in Vietnam, but every corner of the world where the rural and urban poor are still facing house damage or destruction by natural and manmade hazards. The first lesson is that the provision of loan should be accompanied with adequate assistance in the management of families’ income and repayment of the loan. A small grant alongside the loan will provide an extra boost for very poor households. If a loan is given without the help in spending it wisely, or in managing repayment, it might end up not doing any good for the household, and even become an extra burden to them. No less important, this project has proved that there exist feasible technical solutions for building storm-resistant houses at low cost. The key is to build people’s awareness about these solutions, and emphasise the need to strictly follow the technical instruction in the building process. Many households in the project built the house with their own labour, with support from family, friends and neighbours, showing that the construction techniques can easily be replicated. Every credit and/or housing support programme must keep in mind these two principles to make sure the support is meaningful and actually brings about positive change to people’s lives. These are important lessons in the face of another bad storm season this autumn and winter when La Niña is expected to return with similar intensity as the 2020-2021 event.

In 2011, freezing weather resulted in power outages and slick roads across Texas. In 2015, Winter Storm Goliath brought frigid cold and over 8 inches of snow in some areas to Western Texas. In 2017 freezing rain, sleet, and snow iced over roads, downed trees and triggered power outages in northwestern Texas. Photo: Empty grocery store shelves in Austin during the 2021 Texas energy crisis Credit: Jno.skinner via Wikimedia Commons shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license Nonetheless, the February 2021 snowstorm in Texas – which resulted in days-long blackouts, burst water pipes, and a complete shutdown of multiple major cities – is being labeled as ‘unprecedented’. A brief review of headlines and news articles illustrates this trend: From the Houston Chronicle: “West U analyzes response to unprecedented Texas winter storm” From USA Today: “At least 4 dead, 150M people under winter advisories as 'unprecedented' storm stretches across 25 states; 4.3M without power in Texas” From CBS news: “Now many homeowners are dealing with burst pipes and other property damage from the unprecedented snow and cold.” From the Texas Tribune: “Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a press conference regarding Texas’ emergency response to an unprecedented winter storm gripping Texas on Feb. 13, 2021.” According to Dictionary.com, the definition of ‘unprecedented’ is without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled So what, precisely, do people mean when they say the February 2021 storm was unprecedented? Perhaps that the geographic extent of the storm was greater than expected. Possibly that below freezing temperatures to the Mexico border and beyond are rare enough that people tell their kids ‘oh, but I remember this happening once before….’. The one thing that is unquestionable is that ‘unprecedented’ in this case, as is true of most disasters, means ‘unplanned for’. Not in the sense that we don’t plan for exceptional events – we very often do – but that we aren’t very good at planning for the really exceptional events, the type of events where the loss of critical services spells catastrophe. We know the scale of the Texas snow event was unplanned for by its impacts. Surrounding states, though they experienced the same weather, for the most part had much less trouble maintaining or quickly restoring power. Wind generators in New York, fitted with de-icing systems, run year-round without problem. North Dakota provides power to its residents through months of this type of weather each year. Even the El Paso, Texas area maintained power during the February storm. The difference in all of these cases is they recognized the importance of maintaining dependable power, assessed the environmental challenges their systems might have to meet even during an extreme event, and made the necessary investment. Yet, the cold snap debacle resulting from Texas’ choices to both forego weatherizing critical infrastructure and not join the national power grid – increasing the fragility of their system – also provides the rest of America with a valuable wake-up call. Much of the United States infrastructure is poorly maintained and/or woefully overdue for updating. At the same time, climate change is upending historic weather norms with increasing frequency and intensity. We are seeing more intense storms, more severe wildfires, increasing temperature extremes, and greater weather variability. If communities fail to adapt their critical infrastructure to be resilient to these eventualities, some version of Texas’ experience may become theirs. Photo: Satellite data shows blackouts in Houston on February 16 (left) in comparison with data image on February 7 before the storm (right) Credit: Earth Observatory Texas’ experience was one of cascading service failures – a similar cascade seen in virtually any major weather disaster, be it cold, wind, snow, heat, or ice induced. Because our critical systems – power, water, food, transportation, communication, shelter – are increasingly interdependent, failure to any aspect of any one of those sectors can rapidly trigger a domino effect, amplifying the impacts and economic damages. The larger the cascade, the more likely the impacts of these failures will cascade outward to people and businesses who were unimpacted by the initial event. Texas’ failure to winterize their energy grid slowed vaccine delivery across the Southeast with health and pandemic implications for the entire United States. Companies with supply chain links in Texas will be struggling to catch up for weeks. For those in the Southeast and Central United States who shop at Trader Joe’s – hopefully you had access to another grocery store because the shelves in your store have been bare for a week and will probably continue to be so for at least another week. The social and economic cost of these types of cascading failures is immense compared to the up-front investment needed to build resilience into our critical systems. What does it cost a grocery chain when they have nothing to sell for two weeks? And isn’t it bad enough to live through a 5-day blackout without having to go weeks without piped water until you get your plumbing repaired? Yet these impacts only scratch the surface of the personal and economic suffering caused by this event. The cost of storm damages and economic losses in Texas could top those incurred by Hurricane Harvey. Nonetheless, faced with the looming threat of climate change we continue to devalue ex-ante efforts, opting instead for saving money now, avoiding the harsh reality of what that decision might cost us in the future. Post-event reviews of disaster events we have conducted around the world illustrate several actionable entry points for building resilient infrastructure to extreme events: Strengthen critical services to handle greater extremes, recognizing that it is the failure of critical services that turns a crisis into a disaster. Intentionally identify and address the potential for cascading failures. In doing so, take into account not just the built environment, but also the regulatory environment required to allow the built environment to function as intended. Plan for failure and worst-case scenarios. Make sure not just utility operators and/or governments are aware of these plans, but that community members also understand the risk and are prepared to respond if needed. Consider the ‘unthinkable’ and plan for worse. Our extreme event scenarios still focus too locally, assuming things that happened a state or two away couldn’t possibly happen in our community, and they fail to take into account the way climate change is increasing the size, intensity, and frequency of events. In doing so, recognize that climate projections most accurately capture average change, but averages aren’t the challenge, it’s the tails. Simply using average climate change projections for planning will be insufficient. Weatherized, reliable services cost money to establish and protect; but critical systems are the foundation of economic growth and success, and when they fail, as we have just seen in Texas, the human, physical and financial costs can be devastating. The 2021 energy crisis in Texas should serve as an example for Texas and for other states around the country – that events triggered by ‘climate weirding’ may not seem so weird in the very near future and that building a resilient infrastructure that continues to provide reliable critical services through these events requires investment and regulation.

Photo source: https://bit.ly/2lCAPrZ On September 1, 2019 destructive winds and storm surge from Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas. In the days that followed, the storm weakened but expanded in size as it moved northward up the Atlantic coast of the United States. Climate change is intensifying the impacts of hurricanes like Harvey and Irma in 2017, Florence in 2018, and now Dorian in 2019, highlighting the need for coastal communities to start planning and building for what used to be the outer edge of extreme and is now becoming all too normal. Dorian made landfall in the Bahamas as a category 5 hurricane on September 1, 2019 and then slowed to a crawl. Battered by extreme winds for over 36 hours, the Bahamas have been devastated. The world is now trying to understand the scale of the damage and loss and make sense of what it means. A big part of what Hurricane Dorian is showing us is hurricanes have changed. Dorian is following on the heels of four incredibly devastating Atlantic hurricanes: Harvey, Irma and Michael in 2017, and Florence in 2018. Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Florence, like Dorian, were particularly huge, slow storms that dumped massive amounts of rain. Dorian has been particularly destructive in the Bahamas because not only was it huge and slow, it came with category 5 winds. Yet, as our post-event review of Hurricane Florence notes, the Saffir-Simpson scale, which is based on sustained wind speed, does not account for the damaging impacts of storm surge, tides, and rainfall. Indeed, because of their slow speeds, recent category 1 and category 2 storms in the United States have posed an equal if not greater risk to lives and property than higher category storms because of the intense rainfalls they have carried with them. What does this mean for our future? Katherine Hayhoe, the Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech, notes that, in thinking about hurricanes, we should be asking “how much worse did climate change make it?” Increasingly, the evidence is indicating “MUCH worse”. Global temperatures have risen 1.4°F (0.8°C) since 1880. In response, oceans are warming. In turn, this results in stronger hurricane winds, increased rainfall, and slower-moving storms, which extends the time that people and assets are exposed to destructive winds and rains. Coupled with sea level rise, which is making hurricane storm surge worse, these changes will lead to increasingly intense, increasingly destructive hurricanes. For example, for Hurricane Florence, sea surface temperatures were 3.6°F hotter than normal [1], resulting in rainfall 50% higher than it would have been without elevated air and sea surface temperatures[2]. Sea level rise, 11 inches in North Carolina since 1950[3], was responsible for 11,000 (20%) of the homes impacted by Florence's storm surge[4]. Two separate research groups found that the rainfall delivered by Hurricane Harvey, which passed over the Gulf of Mexico when sea surface temperatures were 2.7 to 7.2°F above average, was 38 percent higher than would be expected without climate change[5]. We are facing a new normal of hurricanes- hurricanes that are stronger, bigger, intensify faster, carry massive amounts of rainfall, and that are moving much more slowly. Recognizing this, we need to start planning and building for these types of hurricanes. One place to start is to learn from the communities that have lived through and survived the impacts of these recent hurricanes. ISET and the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance are doing just this. Our post-event reviews, conducted in the U.S. and around the world, identify best practices, lessons learned, and generate actionable recommendations that can help communities to build their resilience in advance of disaster for this new normal. Citations: [1] Forecast: Tropical Storm Florence Discussion Number 36, NWS National Hurricane Center, https://www.climatesignals.org/node/8838 [2] The human influence on Hurricane Florence. Kevin Reed, Alyssa Stansfield, Michael Wehner, & Lawrence Colin M. Zarzycki, https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/you.stonybrook.edu/dist/4/945/files/2018/09/climate_change_Florence_0911201800Z_final-262u19i.pdf [3] https://sealevelrise.org/states/north-carolina/ [4] Sea level rise responsible for 20% of the homes impacted by Hurricane Florence’s storm surge, First Street Foundation, September 2018, https://assets.floodiq.com/2018/09/28f7ba18abd9d30d0f9dc2eed82d3bad-Sea-Level-Rise-and-Hurricane-Florence-Storm-Surge-First-Street-Foundation.pdf [5] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/climate/hurricane-harvey-climate-change.html

Following several trainings at different districts in Da Nang city, the series of Technical Handbook on Design, Construction and Renovation of Typhoon-Resilient Low-Income Housing is finally out in both English and Vietnamese! This series is part of the Undertaking Feasibility Study for Scaling Up the Model of Storm Resistant Housing for a Resilience Da Nang project, which is implemented in 26 months, from 07/2015 to 09/2017. The project aims to formulate recommendations for scaling up the implementation of the disaster resilient housing project in Da Nang City by providing technical support for disaster resilient housing construction and a credit scheme for urban poor households for the establishment of disaster resilient housing.The implementing agency is the Danang Department of Foreign Affairs (DoFA) and ISET acts as a consultancy and technical assistance unit in the implementation process. The project consists of two main components: technical and financial. Under technical component, the mechanism for mobilizing local technical partners has been proposed along with the delivery of a technical handbook to guide the design and construction of typhoon-resilient housing to support the replication and scaling-up of the typhoon-resilient housing model. The three targeted groups of the handbook series are: local officials, local builders and households. In the financial component, the project has proposed a credit and financial mobilization mechanism involving two key stakeholders, the City Women’s Union and the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies, in the operation and management of loans for typhoon-resilient housing construction and renovation. With the results achieved, the project has received special support and attention from the donor (ADB), the city government (through the integration of the Disaster-Resilient Housing Sector in the City’s Resilience Strategy – approved in September 2016), and other international partners (such as the Nordic Development Fund, the Vista Analyze Institute, or the Swiss Global Insurance Company) in continuing the next steps and gradually concretizing the idea of scaling-up the typhoon-resilient housing model to the entire city and, possibly, be applicable to other provinces and cities vulnerable to typhoon such as Da Nang. Please feel free to use or share this handbook series below if you find it useful:

Summary: On May 3, 2019 Cyclone Fani made landfall on the east coast of India, devastating homes and livelihoods. The road of recovery will be a challenging one. However, thanks to effective early warning systems and evacuation protocols established following Cyclone Odisha in 1999, loss of life was minimal. These successes illustrate the value of learning from disaster events to build resilience. At the same time, Fani’s impact on livelihoods clearly identifies the next priority for adaptive learning. The event On May 3 2019, Cyclone Fani made landfall near the city of Puri, on the east coast of India. Fani was the strongest cyclone to hit the area in 20 years and brought with her 125 mph winds, driving rain, and storm surge of up to 13 feet. Fani caused widespread destruction, particularly in the state of Odisha. However, thanks to a strong disaster management plan and quick and effective response, loss of life was limited. Above: Government initiated evacuation process in Puri, Odisha. Photos courtesy of SEEDS. An early warning and evacuation success story In 1999, Cyclone Odisha devastated communities along the coast of the State of Odisha and killed over 10,000 people. To assure future such events were “zero-casualty”, the state actively learned from Cyclone Odisha and made improvements in coordination and communication, evacuation plans, and early warning systems. Ultimately, these changes contributed to the successful evacuation of 1.2 million people away from low-lying areas along the coast in advance of Cyclone Fani. As a result, though 64 people lost their lives, loss of life was dramatically minimized in comparison to the 1999 event. This success story is a testament to the preparation and actions authorities in India took in the days leading up to landfall as well as to the investments made over the last two decades in disaster management planning. Working together with local stakeholders, NGOs, the Indian Red Cross Society, the India Meteorological Department and others, the state of Odisha : Built hundreds of cyclone shelters along the coast. These provided safe shelter for evacuees throughout the duration of the storm. Pre-identified vulnerable households, pre-staged equipment, and pre-stocked food and water at cyclone shelters. Implemented a public warning campaign involving over 2.6 million text messages, and hundreds of volunteers, emergency workers, and local authorities utilizing sirens, loudspeakers, TV and radio. Communicated clear, accurate, actionable messages around evacuation and shelter which provided time for citizens to evacuate and instructions about how and where to evacuate to. Activated tried and tested channels of disaster communication and response, building upon learning from Cyclone Odisha and other natural hazard events. The results of these efforts in terms of loss of life averted speak for themselves and highlight the opportunity disasters present to learn and improve upon current practices. Lessons learned, but looking forward Though Cyclone Fani was a success in terms of early warning, it was nonetheless a humanitarian disaster. Three months after the cyclone, relief camps have wound down and media attention has waned, but Fani’s survivors continue the long road to recovery. Above: Water, shelter and sanitation conditions in Baliapanda in Puri, immediately after Cyclone Fani. Photos courtesy of SEEDS. Early recovery efforts were successful in restoring water systems and avoiding major disease outbreaks. However, the state is struggling to administer relief to impacted areas and to meet basic needs including power, water and food. In the longer-term, impacts to crops and infrastructure have contributed to the devastation of millions of livelihoods and homes. Tourism, a major industry in Odisha, has lost approximately Rs 732 crore (106 million USD) since the cyclone hit. These impacts are having cascading effects throughout the entire local economy, highlighting the need for increased pre-event mitigation. In particular, a greater focus on protecting livelihoods at the community level, where the impacts of natural hazards are felt most immediately, is clearly needed. Odisha has learned how to save lives. As they look towards the future, the next step is saving livelihoods. Success here would serve as an example for the entire world. Above: Destruction caused by Cyclone Fani. Photos courtesy of SEEDS.

Photo: Lê Thị Nguyệt Linh, Cần Thơ Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism Like most cities in the world in their dynamic development process, cities in Vietnam are facing multiple risks and challenges of the 21st century. In Can Tho, problems such as flooding, extreme rainfall and heat waves, water shortage, pollution, diseases, migration crisis and economic downturns tend to become more serious, complicated and unpredictable. These challenges have been causing and will continue to pose threats to people’s lives, the integrity of urban infrastructure, and the achievement of economic targets set by the city. This context makes evident the need to build and strengthen city resilience. This is the rationale for Can Tho city to submit its application to be part of the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) program initiated by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2013. Can Tho is one of the only two Vietnamese cities selected to participate in this program. Embarking on the 100RC program at the end of 2016, after more than two years of implementation, with the coordination of the City Resilience Office (the CRO Office) and the support of ISET as strategy partner, the City Resilience Strategy of Can Tho has now been completed. With this achievement, Can Tho becomes the first municipality in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam to finish a City Resilience Strategy. As stated by the city leadership, “This Strategy represents a new approach, new way of thinking, and new knowledge to connect our citizens with our city government, towards the common goal of building Can Tho to be ever thriving in the face of the expected shocks and stresses of the 21st century”. Can Tho City successfully organized the Strategy Release Workshop on 19 June 2019, with participation of representatives from city departments and agencies, district and ward/commune level governments, social organizations, communities, experts from institutes and universities, enterprises, and international organizations. The active support and close supervision by the city leadership, as well as the comprehensive collaboration among stakeholders, including government agencies, associations, communities, the private sectors, experts and researchers, is an important highlight of the strategy development process. In other words, the completion of this strategy is the result of the close collaboration, joint efforts, active and consistent contribution of stakeholders in the city throughout the two-year period – it is not a product by any organization or individual alone. This approach demonstrates the principle of “working together to bring out the best from all resources”, emphasized by Vice Chairman Dao Anh Dung in his opening remark of the Strategy Release workshop. The strategy identified the shocks and stresses, resilience challenges and limitations of the city related to four areas: Leadership and Strategy, Infrastructure and Environment, Economy and Society, and Health & Well-being. Notably, most proposed actions in the strategy were developed based on consultations and discussions with related city stakeholders, and are incorporated into existing and upcoming programs and projects of the city. The CRO Office and ISET worked with relevant stakeholders in the city to develop 8 of these proposed actions into detailed project proposals, and successfully secured funding for two of them. Both of these proposals are related to building city resilience with green infrastructure measures. Particularly, the project on piloting green infrastructure approach and measures to design and build a public park along Ngong Channel, Thoi Nhut resettlement area in An Khanh Ward was approved by the city government and provided with funds for implementation. These encouraging initial results provide great impetus for the implementation of the Can Tho Resilience Strategy in the upcoming period. However, according to Vice Chairman Dao Anh Dung, this is only the very first step in the very long road that Can Tho city and its citizens will have to journey through. For the Strategy to come alive, the city, local people and stakeholders need to further their cooperative efforts towards the vision of developing Can Tho as a green, sustainable, proactive and integrated river city where people enjoy prosperity and safety from shocks and stresses, and no one is left behind. Please find the strategy in English and Vietnamese below: (Bản dịch Tiếng Việt) Hội thảo công bố Kế hoạch tăng cường khả năng chống chịu của thành phố Cần Thơ đến năm 2030 Cũng như đa số các đô thị đang phát triển năng động trên thế giới, các thành phố ở Việt Nam đang phải đối mặt với nhiều nguy cơ và thách thức của thế kỷ 21. Ở Cần Thơ, những vấn đề như lũ lụt, mưa lớn và nắng nóng cực đoan, thiếu nước, ô nhiễm môi trường, dịch bệnh, khủng hoảng di cư và suy thoái kinh tế đang trở nên ngày càng nghiêm trọng, phức tạp và khó dự báo. Những thách thức này đã, đang và sẽ gây ra những mối đe doạ đối với cuộc sống người dân, hệ thống cơ sở hạ tầng và các mục tiêu tăng trưởng kinh tế của thành phố. Trong bối cảnh đó, việc xây dựng và tăng cường khả năng chống chịu là hết sức cần thiết. Đây là lý do mà thành phố Cần Thơ quyết định nộp hồ sơ đăng ký tham gia Chương trình 100 Thành phố có Khả năng chống chịu (100RC) do Quỹ Rockefeller khởi xướng vào năm 2013. Cần Thơ là một trong hai đại diện duy nhất của Việt Nam (cùng với Đà Nẵng) được lựa chọn tham gia chương trình này. Bắt đầu tham gia chương trình 100RC từ cuối năm 2016, đến nay, sau hơn 2 năm thực hiện, Cần Thơ đã hoàn thành việc xây dựng Kế hoạch Tăng cường Khả năng chống chịu (KNCC) với sự điều phối của văn phòng Thành phố có KNCC (Vp CRO) và sự hỗ trợ của đối tác chiến lược của chương trình 100RC – tổ chức ISET. Kết quả này đưa Cần Thơ trở thành địa phương đầu tiên ở khu vực Đồng bằng sông Cửu Long có một bản kế hoạch tăng cường KNCC. Theo đánh giá của lãnh đạo thành phố, “Kế hoạch này đã cung cấp cách tiếp cận mới, cách suy nghĩ mới, những kiến thức mới để gắn kết người dân và chính quyền thành phố với mục tiêu chung vì thành phố Cần Thơ ngày càng mạnh mẽ hơn trước các cú sốc và áp lực của thế kỷ 21”. Ngày 19 tháng 6 năm 2019 vừa qua, thành phố Cần Thơ đã tổ chức thành công hội thảo công bố Kế hoạch với sự tham gia của đại diện các sở, ban, ngành, quận, huyện, phường, xã, các hội đoàn thể, đại diện cộng đồng, các chuyên gia và nhà khoa học đến từ các Viện, Trường, các doanh nghiệp và các tổ chức quốc tế. Sự hỗ trợ nhiệt tình và chỉ đạo sát sao của lãnh đạo thành phố cũng như mức độ hợp tác toàn diện giữa các bên liên quan bao gồm cả cơ quan nhà nước, hội đoàn thể, cộng đồng, khu vực tư nhân và các chuyên gia, nhà nghiên cứu thực sự là một điểm nhấn quan trọng và nổi bật của quá trình xây dựng Kế hoạch này. Nói một cách cụ thể, Kế hoạch này được hoàn thành dựa vào quá trình hợp tác chặt chẽ, làm việc cùng nhau, sự tham gia chủ động, xuyên suốt của các bên liên quan ở địa phương trong gần 2 năm chứ không phải là sản phẩm của một cá nhân, tổ chức nào. Tiếp cận này thể hiện rõ quan điểm “làm việc cùng nhau để phát huy tối đa mọi nguồn lực” mà Phó chủ tịch thường trực thành phố Đào Anh Dũng đã nhấn mạnh trong phát biểu khai mạc hội thảo. Bản kế hoạch nêu rõ những cú sốc, áp lực và thách thức, hạn chế về khả năng chống chịu, các mục đích và hành động ưu tiên để tăng cường khả năng chống chịu cho thành phố ở 4 lĩnh vực: Lãnh đạo và Chính sách, Hạ tầng và Môi trường, Kinh tế - Xã hội và Phúc lợi và Sức khỏe. Điều đáng lưu ý là, đa số các hành động đề xuất trong kế hoạch đều được xác định trên cơ sở làm việc, trao đổi và thống nhất với các cơ quan, ban, ngành, địa phương tại thành phố và được tích hợp với các chương trình, dự án đang và sẽ triển khai của thành phố. Trong số này, Văn phòng CRO và ISET đã phối hợp cùng các cơ quan liên quan xây dựng được 8 đề xuất dự án chi tiết và xin tài trợ thành công cho 2 đề xuất. Cả hai đề xuất này đều liên quan đến việc tăng cường KNCC cho thành phố thông qua các giải pháp hạ tầng xanh trong đó dự án áp dụng tiếp cận hạ tầng xanh trong thiết kế và xây dựng công viên ven Rạch Ngỗng, khu tái định cư Thới Nhựt 2, phường An Khánh đã được thành phố phê duyệt và cấp kinh phí để triển khai. Những kết quả ban đầu đáng khích lệ này sẽ là tiền đề cho quá trình triển khai Kế hoạch tăng cường KNCC của thành phố Cần Thơ. Tuy nhiên, theo Phó Chủ tịch thành phố Đào Anh Dũng, đây mới chỉ là bước khởi đầu của một chặng đường dài mà thành phố và người dân Cần Thơ cần tiếp tục dấn bước. Để Kế hoạch này thực sự đi vào cuộc sống, thành phố, người dân và các bên liên quan ở địa phương cần tiếp tục hợp tác và nỗ lực hơn nữa hướng tới tầm nhìn xây dựng Cần Thơ thành một thành phố sông nước, xanh, bền vững, năng động và hội nhập, nơi người dân có cuộc sống sung túc và an toàn trước những cú sốc, áp lực và không ai bị bỏ lại phía sau.

Ảnh: Tran Tuan Anh, ISET-Việt Nam [Đọc bằng Tiếng Anh] Dự án được thực hiện từ tháng 3/2018 đến tháng 3/2019 nhằm nâng cấp nhà ở của các hộ nghèo và cận nghèo sinh sống tại những khu vực dễ bị tổn thương ở thành phố Đông Hà, tỉnh Quảng Trị. Tổng cộng 32 hộ được hưởng lợi từ dự án ở 4 phường của thành phố Đông Hà là Đông Thanh, Đông Giang, Đông Lương và phường 4. Dự án được tài trợ bởi Viện chuyển đổi Môi trường và Xã hội (ISET) trong khuôn khổ chương trình ACCCRN tại Việt Nam Ngày 1 tháng 3 năm 2019, Hội Phụ Nữ tỉnh Quảng Trị phối hợp với ISET đã tổ chức hội thảo cuối kỳ để đánh giá một năm thực hiện dự án, xem xét những ưu và nhược điểm trong quá trình thực hiện và rút ra kinh nghiệm và bài học cho những bước tiếp theo nhằm triển khai mô hình nhà chống bão tới các gia đình khác cần sự hỗ trợ. Dự án được đánh giá cao bởi chính quyền tỉnh và địa phương, cùng các sở ban ngành liên quan bởi ý nghĩa mà dự án mang lại và những hiệu ứng tích cực tới các hộ dân ở Đông Hà nói riêng và người dân Quảng Trị nói chung. Dù hạn chế về tài chính, dự án đã có tầm ảnh hưởng lớn đối với nhận thức và hành động về xây dựng và cải tạo nhà ở tại địa phương. Vấn đề an toàn và giảm thiểu rủi ro thiên tai nay được chú ý nhiều hơn là thẩm mỹ—một yếu tố trước đây thường được đặt nặng hơn những vấn đề liên quan đến an toàn trong thực tiễn xây dựng nhà cho các hộ thu nhập thấp. Theo lời của đại diện chính quyền thành phố Đông Hà, dự án này đóng vai trò là một trong những dự án tiên phong về khả năng chống chịu với biến đổi khí hậu với sự lồng ghép các phương pháp đảm bảo an toàn và cải thiện nhà ở của các hộ thu nhập thấp. Do đó, dự án đã tác động mạnh đến quan điểm của không chỉ các hộ hưởng lợi mà còn cả các bên liên quan khác tại thành phố Đông Hà. Với khoản vay 25 triệu đồng cho mỗi hộ sửa chữa và 35 triệu đồng cho mỗi hộ xây mới, các hộ hưởng lợi còn huy động thêm các nguồn tài chính khác, ví dụ như từ người thân (chiếm 12% tổng chi phí cải thiện nhà). Quan trọng hơn, dự án huy động sự đóng góp lớn từ các hộ hưởng lợi dưới hình thức tiền mặt (36%) và nhân công (14%). Thêm vào đó, dự án đã huy động được sự đóng góp nhiều nguồn tại địa phương như Quỹ Đại Đoàn Kết (4%) và Đoàn Thanh Niên (2%). Những con số trên cho thấy tác động tích cực của dự án ISET đến việc huy động các nguồn tài chính khác nhau tại địa phương để cùng hỗ trợ nâng cấp nhà ở hướng tới nâng cao khả năng chống chịu cho các hộ nghèo và cận nghèo. Dự án của ISET đưa ra các kiểu nhà chống bão khác nhau do hiện trạng của các căn nhà cũ cũng khác nhau, và sự khác nhau trong nhu cầu và khả năng đóng góp của từng hộ. Tuy nhiên, các hộ cũng phải tuân thủ một vài nguyên tắc xây dựng chủ chốt để đảm bảo khả năng chống chịu với BĐKH. Với các hộ xây mới, một căn phòng kiên cố với hệ khung và sàn khép kín làm bằng bê tông cốt thép cần được đưa vào kết cấu của ngôi nhà. Với nhà cải tạo, tuỳ vào hiện trạng từng ngôi nhà, phần tường và mái được đánh giá cẩn thận bởi kiến trúc sư địa phương có kinh nghiệm để xác định được phần nào cần được đưa vào kết cấu có sẵn và/hoặc phần nào cần được gia cố để tăng sự an toàn cho ngôi nhà. Tất cả các giải pháp kỹ thuật đề ra cho mỗi hộ được thảo luận với chủ nhà trước đó để họ có thể hiểu rõ và đồng ý trước khi bắt đầu xây mới hoặc cải tạo nhà. Dự án cũng đưa ra một số vấn đề quan trọng cần được xem xét khi thực thi các chương trình về nhà ở trong tương lai tại tỉnh Quảng Trị. Đầu tiên là tính cần thiết phải cải thiện sự trao đổi và hợp tác giữa các bên tham gia vào dự án, đặc biệt là giữa các đối tác kỹ thuật được thuê và bên đứng thuê (ví dụ như HPN). Thứ hai là tầm quan trọng của việc tổ chức các buổi phổ biến thông tin và tập huấn theo cách mà phía địa phương có thể hiểu và thực hiện được. Việc này giúp các bên liên quan ở địa phương và các hộ dễ bị tổn thương có thể nhận thức được đầy đủ vai trò của nhà chống bão trong vấn đề giảm nghèo và ổn định cuộc sống cho các gia đình. Thứ ba là sự cần thiết phải có các giải pháp thiết kế nhà chống bão linh hoạt để các hộ gia đình khác nhau, tuỳ điều kiện và khả năng kinh tế, có thể lồng ghép các phương pháp an toàn trong quá trình cải tạo nhà. Thêm vào đó, dự án cũng đã chỉ ra một số bất cập trong công tác trao đổi thông tin trong hệ thống của HPN khi các nhân viên cấp dưới đôi khi chưa thực sự hiểu rõ mục đích và định hướng, phương pháp và cách thức thực hiện cũng như kết quả mong đợi của dự án, khiến họ có thể truyền đạt thông tin chưa đầy đủ, thậm chí chưa chính xác tới các nhóm địa phương và các hộ hưởng lợi. Điều này dễ dẫn tới các hộ thuộc đối tượng rủi ro cao hiểu chưa đúng về dự án và đôi khi khiến các hộ gia đình có nhu cầu lại không đăng ký tham gia. Nhìn chung, dự án đã tạo nên được những tác động tích cực tới tỉnh Quảng Trị nói chung và thành phố Đông Hà nói riêng. Hội thảo tổng kết dự án đã được cả các cơ quan nhà nước và đơn vị tư nhân đánh giá cao về tầm quan trọng và tính thiết yếu trong việc thay đổi nhận thức và hành động của người dân trong việc cải thiện nhà ở. Dự án cũng giúp tăng cường năng lực của cán bộ địa phương, cụ thể là trong hệ thống của HPN, trong việc vận hành và quản lý các chương trình về nhà an toàn đi đôi với các phương án tài chính vi mô về nhà ở. Hơn nữa, 32 ngôi nhà đã được xây mới và cải tạo theo các nguyên tắc nhà chống bão cũng là những bài học quý giá cho các hộ dân sinh sống xung quanh khi cần xây mới hoặc sửa lại ngôi nhà của họ.

Photo: Tran Tuan Anh, ISET-Viet Nam Read in Vietnamese The project was implemented from March 2018 to March 2019 to upgrade housing of poor and near poor families living in vulnerable areas of Dong Ha City, Quang Tri Province, Central Vietnam. There are totally 32 beneficiary households located in 4 urban wards of Dong Ha City: Dong Thanh, Dong Giang, Dong Luong and Ward No.4. The project has been funded by the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET) under the ACCCRN program in Vietnam. On March 01, 2019, the Quang Tri Women’s Union (WU), in collaboration with ISET, organized a final workshop to assess one-year implementation of the project, advantages and disadvantages during implementation and to derive experiences and lessons for next steps of rolling out climate-resilient housing models to other in-need families. The project has been highly appreciated by the provincial and local governments, departments and agencies towards its meaningfulness and positive effects to Dong Ha residents particularly and Quang Tri people generally. In spite of the limited funding, the project has significantly improved local awareness and practice of housing construction and renovation. Issues of safety and disaster risk reduction has been paid more attention than the aesthetic ones – the thing that was previously received more attention than safety-related issues in low-income housing construction practices. Stated by the Dong Ha City Government representative, this project plays the role as one of the pioneer projects on climate resilience in terms of integrating safety-ensured measures into low-income housing improvement. Therefore, it has generated a really significant impact on perceptions of not only beneficiary households but also of local stakeholders in Dong Ha City. With a loan of 25 million VND for retrofitting and 35 million VND for new construction per house, the beneficiary households mobilized other sources of funding such as from their relatives (12% of total cost of housing improvements). More importantly, the project mobilized the significant contribution of beneficiary households in form of in-cash (36%) and in-kind (14%). In addition, the project has mobilized the contribution of local sources such as the local Great Unity Fund (4%) and the City Youth’s Union (2%). These figures show the positive impact of the ISET-financed project in mobilizing various sources of local funding to co-assist poor and near poor households in upgrading their housing towards resilience performance. Forms of climate-resilient houses provided in the ISET housing program is also different from each other due to different conditions of the existing old houses and different demands and contributing capacity of each household. However, there are several key principles of construction that all of the houses had to follow to ensure the climate resilience capability. For newly built houses, a solid room made with closed reinforced concrete skeleton and slab was required to include in the house structure. For the retrofitted houses, depending on the existing conditions of each house, wall and roof parts were carefully assessed by an experienced local architect to identify which components should be added to the existing structure and/or consolidated to improve the safety of the house. All technical solutions proposed to the house were discussed with house owners in advance to allow their full understanding and agreement prior to executing housing construction/retrofitting on site. The project has also raised some important issues that need to be considered in future housing implementation in Quang Tri. First is the necessity of improving communication and collaboration between local stakeholders participating in the project, especially between the hired technical partner(s) and the hirer (e.g. WU). Second is the importance of conducting information and training session in the manner that is locally understandable and applicable. It allows all local stakeholders and vulnerable households to fully perceive the role of climate-resilient housing to their poverty alleviation and family stable development. Third is the need of having flexible design solutions of climate-resilient housing where different households, depending on their own situations and financial capacity, are able to integrate safety-related measures in their housing improvement. In addition, the project has also identified some gaps in the internal communication of WU system in which staffs of lower levels sometimes did not fully capture the aim and purposes of the project, the approach and methods of implementation, and the expected results so that they are likely to transfer insufficient or even incorrect information to local groups and beneficiary households. It may lead to the misunderstanding of at-risk households and potentially hinder the registration of in-need households. In general, the project has generated a positive impact in Quang Tri Province generally and Dong Ha City particularly. The final workshop has witnessed the high appreciation of the public and private sector towards the importance and vitality of this project in changing local awareness and people’s behaviors towards housing improvement. The project has also built the capacity of local staff, particularly within the WU system, in operating and managing safe housing programs in line with running housing microfinance schemes. Furthermore, the 32 houses already built and retrofitted in accordance with climate resilient principles are also a good lesson learnt for other households nearby when they want to rebuild or retrofit their houses.

Agriculture field in Hoa Khuong commune, Da Nang. Photo: Thanh Ngo, ISET-International Early November 2017, storm no. 12 (Typhoon Damrey) with level 12 winds, level 15 gusts and heavy rain made a landfall on the central coast of Vietnam. Fearing that the increasing water levels would risk reservoir safety, many hydropower reservoirs opened their floodgates and released huge amounts of water for several days continuously, causing extensive flooding downstream. At the time, Da Nang City was at the height of preparation to host the Asian and the Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC) Summit from November 6-11, 2017, and Hoi An City of Quang Nam Province was also selected as the venue for the visit of the spouses of APEC leaders, Ministers and other representative agencies on November 7, 2017. Though escaping the brunt of the devastating typhoon, both municipalities still suffered tremendous damages [1]. Floodwater released from the reservoirs of Song Tranh 2, Dak Mi 4, Song Bung 4 hydropower plants [2] caused the Thu Bon and Vu Gia rivers to swell, raising floods in many low-lying areas of Da Nang and Quang Nam, with Hoa Vang district of Da Nang city and Dai Loc and Dien Ban districts of Quang Nam province being the hardest hit. As reported by local people in Hoa Khuong commune, Hoa Vang district, the flood caused by Typhoon Damrey in 2017 was an extreme event, with some flood posts in the commune recording flood levels higher than those in the historical flood in 1999, partly due to changes in the local landscape as a result of construction and renovation of belt roads and national highways in the area (such as DT406, DT08, and National Highway 14B). Occurring right before the APEC week, the severe impacts of storms and flooding on all aspects of the socio-economic life in Quang Nam and Da Nang was put in the spotlight. However, not only in 2017 with typhoon Damrey but year after year, flooding and also droughts are becoming more and more severe, affecting the lives, livelihoods, safety and health of local people. Moreover, during the recent years, flooding and droughts in this region have become less and less mere ‘natural’ events, but more and more driven by the impacts of human activities, particularly the construction and management of the cascade of hydropower dams, water resource management infrastructure, and other infrastructure in the Vu Gia – Thu Bon river basin. An inter-provincial river system, originating from the mountainous areas of Quang Nam and reaching the sea via estuaries in both Quang Nam and Da Nang, the Vu Gia - Thu Bon poses a tricky multi-variable problem for both municipalities in how to manage its water balance in the context of the existing infrastructure system from upstream to downstream areas, especially when rains and storms are becoming more unpredictable because of climate change. The policy brief document featured here describes the experience of a project led by ISET and funded by the Global Resilience Partnership in support of an official platform of Quang Nam and Da Nang aimed at promoting inter-provincial dialogues, investigations and collaboration to address flooding, water shortages, among other water related issues in shared Vu Gia – Thu Bon river basin. The document provides important insights and lessons for (inter-)provincial and national policies for river basin management in Vietnam, especially in the context of expected national policy on the establishment and operation of new River Basin Organizations in the country. [1] By November 16, 2017, a total of 36 people had been killed and 1 person was missing in Quang Nam because of Typhoon Damrey. Source: https://news.zing.vn/quang-nam-thiet-hai-1500-ty-do-mua-lu-va-sat-lo-post796570.html [2] According to the Steering Committee for Disaster Prevention and Control, Search and Rescue of Quang Nam province, floodwater release from the reservoirs was at the highest rate at 21:00 of November 4, 2017. Specifically, Song Bung 4 reservoir water was released into the Vu Gia river at 4,270 m3/s (the rate was only 1,658 m3/s at 12:00 of the same day), Song Tranh 2 reservoir water was released into the Thu Bon river at 2,198 m3/s (the rate was only 305 m3/s at 12:00 of the same day), and Dak Mi 4 reservoir at 3.349 m3/s (1.416 m3/s). Source: http://plo.vn/thoi-su/hoi-an-va-vung-trung-da-nang-ngap-chim-trong-lu-737631.html